Siavahda's Blog, page 47

Must-Have Monday #133

NINE books to be excited for this week!

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

Any Other City by Hazel Jane Plante
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Speculative Fiction
Representation: Trans MC
Published on: 18th April 2023
Goodreads

Any Other City is a two-sided fictional memoir by Tracy St. Cyr, who helms the beloved indie rock band Static Saints. Side A is a snapshot of her life from 1993, when Tracy arrives in a labyrinthine city as a fledgling artist and unexpectedly falls in with a clutch of trans women, including the iconoclastic visual artist Sadie Tang.

Side B finds Tracy, now a semi-famous musician, in the same strange city in 2019, healing from a traumatic event through songwriting, queer kinship, and sexual pleasure. While writing her memoir, Tracy perceives how the past reverberates into the present, how a body is a time machine, how there’s power in refusing to dust the past with powdered sugar, and how seedlings begin to slowly grow in empty spaces after things have been broken open.

Motifs recur like musical phrases, and traces of what used to be there peek through, like a palimpsest. Any Other City is a novel about friendship and other forms of love, travelling in a body across decades, and transmuting trauma through art making and queer sex—a love letter to trans femmes and to art itself.

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After Jes Battis (author of the wonderful Winter Knight) talked about Any Other City in their interview for Ada Hoffman’s Autistic Reader series, I have been obsessed. Luckily I didn’t have to wait too long between finding out about it and its pub day!

The Bone Shard War (The Drowning Empire, #3) by Andrea Stewart
Genres: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MC
Published on: 18th April 2023
Goodreads

The Bone Shard Daughter was hailed as "one of the best debut fantasy novels of the year" (BuzzFeed News). Now, Andrea Stewart brings us the final book in this unmissable, action-packed, magic-laced epic fantasy trilogy, The Bone Shard War.

Lin Sukai has won her first victory as Emperor, but the future of the Phoenix Empire hangs in the balance – and Lin is dangerously short of allies. 

As her own governors plot treason, the Shardless Few renew hostilities. Worse still, Lin discovers her old nemesis Nisong has joined forces with the rogue Alanga, Ragan. Both seek her death.  

Yet hopes lies in history. Legend tells of seven mythic swords, forged in centuries past. If Lin can find them before her enemies, she may yet be able to turn the tide.     If she fails, the Sukai dynasty – and the entire empire – will fall.  

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The finale to the Drowning Empire trilogy!!! If you haven’t been reading this series, you officially have no more excuse not to!

The Warden (The Warden Series, 1) by Daniel M. Ford
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bi/pansexual MC
Published on: 18th April 2023
Goodreads

Aelis de Lenti is a young woman of means, intelligence, and magical ability. A gifted graduate of the Lyceum, she is poised to begin her career as a Warden, a wizard trusted to investigate crimes and enforce laws. A city girl through and through, Aelis is shocked to find herself headed to a sheep-herding village hundreds of miles away from the world she knows. Her expectations of working out her contract in the comfort and wine cellars of the city of Antraval are substituted for clearing out her ruin of a wizard’s tower and helping farmers fix fences. What’s worse, her speciality is Necromancy, and her academic enthusiasm for her subject is not winning her any friends.

Then a war-wagon full of adventurers – including one particularly beautiful half-elf – and a golden treasure rolls into town from the war-torn wilderness over the mountains. As brother is set against brother, neighbour against friend, Aelis must use all her training as a Warden to solve the mystery. With the help of the half-orc trapper Tun, she chases her suspect into the wilderness, uncovering a partisan plot to reinstate a leader in the abandoned lands and beginning to unravel the mysteries and secrets surrounding Lone Pine.

THE WARDEN is the first book in a new fantasy series set in a vividly realised world with a wonderfully complex supporting cast. Aelis de Lenti is impatient and bossy, and used to getting her way – but she’s responsible for the people of Lone Pine, and no-one’s getting away with murder on her watch.

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I quite enjoyed the sneak peek Tor published a while back for this one, so even though I have no idea what Twin Peaks is, I’m looking forward to getting to know Aelis and her wards!

Furious Heaven (The Sun Chronicles, #2) by Kate Elliott
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: East Asian-coded cast, sapphic MC, F/F, queernorm world
Published on: 18th April 2023
Goodreads

Non-stop action, space battles and intrigue abound in the second in a galactic-scale, gender-swapped space opera trilogy inspired by the life of Alexander The Great.

The Republic of Chaonia fleets under the joint command of Princess Sun and her formidable mother, Queen-Marshal Eirene, have defeated and driven out an invading fleet of the Phene Empire, although not without heavy losses. But the Empire remains strong and undeterred. While Chaonia scrambles to rebuild its military, the Empire's rulers are determined to squash Chaonia once and for all by any means necessary.

On the eve of Eirene's bold attack on the rich and populous Karnos System, an unexpected tragedy strikes the republic. Sun must take charge or lose the throne. Will Sun be content with the pragmatic path laid out by her mother for Chaonia's future? Or will she forge her own legend despite all the forces arrayed against her?

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The US release of the second book in the Sun Chronicles! I love Kate Elliott’s incredible worldbuilding so much, and although I did DNF this one, it wasn’t because of anything wrong with the book – I’ve just realised I’m not very good at enjoying books about war lately.

The Blue Is Where God Lives by Sharon Sochil Washington
Genres: Speculative Fiction
Representation: Black cast
Published on: 18th April 2023
Goodreads

A powerful work of Afro-magic realism that interrogates the legacy of slavery and roots of poverty, witnesses the beauty and power in survival, and asks whether belief, magic, and intention can forge new realities

Blue’s daughter, Tsitra, is dying a horrific death. Thousands of miles away, Blue feels time slowing and hears voices, followed by an 18-month stillness. More than a century before, Blue’s grandparents, Amanda and Palmer, attend a salon party in New Orleans. It’s a veritable array of who’s-who within pre–Civil War social circles. Conversations get heated quickly as Ismay, the hostess who hails from French royalty, antagonizes Palmer, a landowner whose parents had been sold into American slavery and who’s there to seek revenge, and Amanda, a shapeshifter and puzzlemaker who had been enslaved until this very gathering. At this party, Amanda learns of a plot that will doom a line of her—and Palmer’s—family to poverty. She devises her own counter-plot to undo the damage.

Meanwhile, Blue comes out of her stillness, broke and devoid of inspiration. In profound grief and consumed by guilt, Blue travels to The Ranch where the voices grow louder and she has visions of two women from the distant past. As time collapses and Blue and Amanda meet in the space of possibility, Blue feels the spark of a power and creative energy she has only glimpsed. A novel of invention but grounded in the real, The Blue Is Where God Lives is a dual-timeline, time-bending novel of undeniable beauty, magic, and possibility.

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I haven’t been able to get a very clear picture of this book, but I’ve seen nothing but praise for it, and I’m curious about the speculative fiction elements.

The Thick and the Lean by Chana Porter
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Speculative Fiction
Representation: Bisexual MC, Indigenous MC
Published on: 18th April 2023
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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I am VERY INTO books about food, especially the decadence of it, which – it sounds like that might be a fairly big part of this? I’ve also heard that the society that has all this shame tied up in food has completely scrapped the idea of sexual shame, and I’m very curious as to what that might look like!

A Hunger of Thorns (A Hunger of Thorns, #1) by Lili Wilkinson
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer MC, secondary F/F
Published on: 18th April 2023
Goodreads

Maude is the daughter of witches. She spent her childhood running wild with her best friend, Odette, weaving stories of girls who slayed dragons and saved princes. Then Maude grew up and lost her magic—and her best friend.

These days, magic is toothless, reduced to glamour patches and psychic energy drinks found in supermarkets and shopping malls. Odette has always hungered for forbidden, dangerous magic, and two weeks ago she went searching for it. Now she’s missing, and everyone says she’s dead. Everyone except Maude.

Storytelling has always been Maude’s gift, so she knows all about girls who get lost in the woods. She’s sure she can find Odette inside the ruins of Sicklehurst, an abandoned power plant built over an ancient magical forest—a place nobody else seems to remember is there. The danger is, no one knows what remains inside Sicklehurst, either. And every good story is sure to have a monster.

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I picked this one up almost on a whim – and it turned out to be such a treasure! Ridiculously gorgeous prose; a twisty, all-bets-are-off plot that constantly surprised me; an intriguing urban fantasy setting; and a powerful theme of Let Girls Be Wild! I still can’t believe that this is Wilkinson’s first fantasy novel!

My review!

Damsel by Evelyn Skye
Genres: Fantasy
Published on: 18th April 2023
Goodreads

A damsel in distress takes on the dragon herself in this epic twist on classic fantasy—a groundbreaking collaboration between New York Times bestselling author Evelyn Skye and the team behind the upcoming Netflix film Damsel, starring Millie Bobby Brown.

Elodie never dreamed of a lavish palace or a handsome prince. Growing up in the famine-stricken realm of Inophe, her deepest wish was to help her people survive each winter. So when a representative from a rich, reclusive kingdom offers her family enough wealth to save Inophe in exchange for Elodie’s hand in marriage, she accepts without hesitation. Swept away to the glistening kingdom of Aurea, Elodie is quickly taken in by the beauty of the realm—and of her betrothed, Prince Henry.

But as Elodie undertakes the rituals to become an Aurean princess, doubts prick at her mind as cracks in the kingdom’s perfect veneer begin to show: A young woman who appears and vanishes from the castle tower. A parade of torches weaving through the mountains. Markings left behind in a mysterious “V.” Too late, she discovers that Aurea’s prosperity has been purchased at a heavy cost—each harvest season, the kingdom sacrifices its princesses to a hungry dragon. And Elodie is the next sacrifice.

This ancient arrangement has persisted for centuries, leading hundreds of women to their deaths. But the women who came before Elodie did not go quietly. Their blood pulses with power and memory, and their experiences hold the key to Elodie’s survival. Forced to fight for her life, this damsel must use her wits to defeat a dragon, uncover Aurea’s past, and save not only herself, but the future of her new kingdom as well.

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Urgh, I can’t believe someone slapped that ugly Netflix sticker on such a beautiful cover! Sigh. That won’t stop me from checking our the book, of course. I’m cautiously interested in a feminist take on the sacrificing-a-damsel story; we’ll see how it goes!

The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher by E.M. Anderson
Genres: Fantasy, High Fantasy
Representation: Elderly MC, queer secondary character
Published on: 21st April 2023
Goodreads

You're never too old for adventure.

When you’re a geriatric armed with nothing but gumption and knitting needles, stopping a sorcerer from wiping out an entire dragon-fighting organization is a tall order. No one understands why 83-year-old Edna Fisher is the Chosen One, destined to save the Knights from a dragon-riding sorcerer bent on their destruction. After all, Edna has never handled a magical weapon, faced down a dragon, or cast a spell. And everyone knows the Council of Wizards always chooses a teenager—like the vengeful girl ready to snatch Edna’s destiny from under her nose.

Still, Edna leaps at the chance to leave the nursing home. With her son long dead in the Knights’ service, she’s determined to save dragon-fighters like him and to ensure other mothers don’t suffer the same loss she did. But as Edna learns about the abuse in the ranks and the sorcerer’s history as a Knight, she questions if it’s really the sorcerer that needs stopping—or the Knights she’s trying to save.

“Beyond the utterly charming premise of this wonderful book, you will find dazzling wit, a cast of delightful characters, and a plot that will sweep you away. At heart, this is a love story, but one that shows the depth and complexity of love in all its permutations. But my very favourite thing about this book is how it makes me believe in a kinder, better world.”
- SJ Whitby, author of the Cute Mutants series

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I’ve been dying to read Remarkable Retirement ever since I heard of it – I was even part of the cover reveal! I love it when storytellers play with the Chosen One trope, and I’m so happy to see an elderly protagonist – how often do we get one of those?! But the thing that probably has me most excited is the blurb-quote from SJ Whitby – “my very favourite thing about this book is how it makes me believe in a kinder, better world.” I love books like that, and I’ve been craving more of them lately. This sounds like it’ll be perfect!

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

The post Must-Have Monday #133 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Sunday Souçons #20

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

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

Two books with superficial similarities that got very different ratings from me!

The Left Hand of Darkness (Hainish Cycle, #4) by Ursula K. Le Guin
Genres: Sci Fi
Representation: Nonbinary 'aliens', incl one PoV character
PoV: 1st-person, past-tense, dual PoVs
ISBN: B00YBA7PGW
Goodreads

Ursula K. Le Guin's groundbreaking work of science fiction—winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

A lone human ambassador is sent to Winter, an alien world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants can change their gender whenever they choose. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters...

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.

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Frankly? I hated this book. So much. After hearing it described as this mindblowing scifi exploration of gender my entire life, it was a complete fail. Not only is the ‘gender stuff’ relegated to background worldbuilding and the occasional overly-pretentious, quasi-philosophical one-liner, the actual story itself is unbelievably boring. Which is kind of impressive in and of itself, I guess, because it takes work to make First Contact boring.

And this is a First Contact story; First Contact and what I guess we can call political intrigue, with a great big dollop of survivalist fiction to wrap it up. (The planet is called Winter and is exactly as cold and icy as you’d expect.) It’s not a case of the messaging not having aged well or anything; this simply isn’t a book about gender, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why everyone seems to think it is. Even Le Guin herself said it wasn’t about gender, in her essay ‘Is Gender Necessary?’, published in 1976. (Over 10 years later she changed her mind and said gender was a central theme in The Left Hand of Darkness. I don’t know what to make of that change of positions, honestly.) I’ve also seen it pitched as a love story; a few editions of the book even describe it that way in the blurb, which I think is hugely misleading. It’s technically accurate, but not in any way a reader going looking for a love story would expect or is likely to enjoy.

Regardless, I think it’s very clear that I do not get on with Le Guin’s fiction. I didn’t enjoy Wizard of Earthsea, and the only reason I didn’t DNF Left Hand was that reading aloud from it every night helped both me and the hubby pass out when we had trouble sleeping. From where I’m standing, Guin’s prose is just really fucking bad; repetitive, simultaneously bland and overblown, sometimes so periphrastic that it’s impenetrable. And gods, so incredibly pretentious. The story of Left Hand isn’t that complicated (or interesting); if it hadn’t been written so strangely, it could have been told in half as many pages as it actually was.

I’m not someone who thinks a story should fit into as few pages as possible. It’s just that, in this particular case, fewer pages would have meant a shorter time spent suffering through this book.

Tuyo (Tuyo, #1) by Rachel Neumeier
Genres: Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy
PoV: 1st-person, past-tense
ISBN: B088ZQ1YBK
Goodreads

Raised a warrior in the harsh winter country, Ryo inGara has always been willing to die for his family and his tribe. When war erupts against the summer country, the prospect of death in battle seems imminent. But when his warleader leaves Ryo as a sacrifice -- a tuyo -- to die at the hands of their enemies, he faces a fate he never imagined.

Ryo's captor, a lord of the summer country, may be an enemy . . . but far worse enemies are moving, with the current war nothing but the opening moves in a hidden game Ryo barely glimpses, a game in which all his people may be merely pawns. Suddenly Ryo finds his convictions overturned and his loyalties uncertain. Should he support the man who holds him prisoner, the only man who may be able to defeat their greater enemy? And even if he does, can he persuade his people to do the same?

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Now for a very different book that also features a land of endless ice and snow, and a central platonic relationship! I enjoyed this immensely, and really loved how worldbuilding that initially looked a bit simplistic (on one side of the river is the winter country, on the other is summer) gradually revealed itself to be deep and intricate and rich.

I think it says most of what you need to know when I tell you that I picked Tuyo up, intending to just check out the first few pages to see where to place it on my tbr…and next thing I know, it’s fifteen minutes to midnight and I’ve finished the whole thing!

If someone had tried to pitch the premise to me, I wouldn’t have been interested – hence it taking me three years to pick up, despite my being a long-time fan of Neumeier’s. But Tuyo swallowed me whole. The way it was told, the characters and the twistiness of the plot, made a story that I wouldn’t have expected to interest me completely entrancing. And I continue to absolutely adore how Neumeier writes friendship and respect.

Although would it really hurt if just once, one of these deep same-sex relationships turned into queer love? Sigh.

I’ll definitely be reading the rest of the series!

The post Sunday Souçons #20 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Consider Me Enchanted: A Hunger of Thorns by Lili Wilkinson

A Hunger of Thorns (A Hunger of Thorns, #1) by Lili Wilkinson
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer MC, background F/F
PoV: 1st-person, present tense
Published on: 18th April 2023
ISBN: B0B6YNRV1F
Goodreads

Maude is the daughter of witches. She spent her childhood running wild with her best friend, Odette, weaving stories of girls who slayed dragons and saved princes. Then Maude grew up and lost her magic—and her best friend.

These days, magic is toothless, reduced to glamour patches and psychic energy drinks found in supermarkets and shopping malls. Odette has always hungered for forbidden, dangerous magic, and two weeks ago she went searching for it. Now she’s missing, and everyone says she’s dead. Everyone except Maude.

Storytelling has always been Maude’s gift, so she knows all about girls who get lost in the woods. She’s sure she can find Odette inside the ruins of Sicklehurst, an abandoned power plant built over an ancient magical forest—a place nobody else seems to remember is there. The danger is, no one knows what remains inside Sicklehurst, either. And every good story is sure to have a monster.

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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~let girls be Wild
~putting chains on magic never ends well
~a swan prince
~don’t trust the grown-ups
~be careful what stories you tell

It was the gorgeous cover of A Hunger of Thorns that caught my eye, but it was the excerpt of Laini Taylor-worthy prose on its Netgalley page that made it a must-read.

And I’m so glad I requested it (and was accepted!) because truly, A Hunger of Thorns is marvellous.

Wilkinson uses lush, rich prose to deftly craft a world just a sidestep or two from our own; one with cars and power plants, but with (strictly regulated) magic in the form of glamour patches and dresses that never wrinkle. Magic used to be a fiercer, wilder thing, but after years of witches being declared terrorists and put in labour camps – where their mettle, which is both life-force and magic, is drained to make aforementioned glamour patches et al – it’s been broken and tamed.

Or so the authorities want everyone to think.

They tied us up in invisible chains and gagged us with iron and steel. There aren’t many of us left. But you will lead the resistance, as fierce and relentless as thunder. You’ll show those petty warlocks and oath breakers what true power looks like. They will cower before you, grovel for your mercy and your favor. And you will make them pay for what they have done to us.”

Maude certainly thinks of herself as declawed and mundane; when her own magic dried up at puberty (which, alas, happens sometimes) her best friend Odette dropped her and never looked back. But despite that, Maude can’t do nothing when Odette disappears. Armed with nothing but her imagination and sense of storytelling, she goes after her once-friend – even when that means following her trace into a place that can’t possibly exist, and stories that definitely aren’t supposed to be real.

I’m a complete sucker for gorgeous prose, and Wilkinson’s is rich and sweet, absolutely decadent – but I very quickly grew to love A Hunger of Thorns for a lot more than its writing. The story is twisty and toothed – this is absolutely not a book where you can be confident that every grand idea will work, or that every heroic act will succeed – or even that everything is going to turn out all right. Wilkinson delights in setting up the reader’s expectations only to dash them to the floor; so many times, I thought something was about to be resolved only for the story to buck convention again. The only guarantee was that if I thought the story, or part of the story, was about to be concluded, it wasn’t. And that’s something I really love – even if it also had my blood pressure through the ROOF as I worried for the characters!

“I have to.”

“Why?”

I shrug. “It’s what people always say in storybooks.”

Rufus makes a disgusted noise. “That’s never ben a good reason to do anything.”

I’m a big fan of let-girls-be-wild, and the parallels between the supposedly-subdued magic and Maude herself were a really lovely touch. Maude has tried so hard to be a Good Girl, fairly vulnerable to the disapproval of authority figures despite being raised by two very fierce women – but then, Maude also saw her mother taken away, punished, and ultimately killed for refusing to follow the rules, so maybe it’s not so surprising that Maude wants to keep her head down and her shoes shiny. Whether she wants to or not, though, A Hunger of Thorns is very much a shed-your-cocoon story; Maude has to be Wild, not Good, to face what she faces and survive it – and I thought her difficulties with that were very realistic. It’s hard to stop being a Good Girl, even when your life depends on it!

But if you stay home all the time, stories never happen. Sometimes you have to break something in order for the story to leak out through the cracks.

That being said, I did think the Let Girls Be Wild messaging was a bit heavy-handed; there are a fair few references and flashbacks to things the school principal (a man, obviously) has said to Maude over the years, and I thought that was a bit clumsily done. The sense Maude has of him, as this big important terrifying figure, doesn’t really come through to the reader, because he’s hardly ever on page. So the effect is more why do we care what this old white man thinks? rather than feeling the pressure to conform.

But if those parts are a bit heavy-handed in the middle part of the book, the climax is flat-out magnificent, and there we really feel the exultation and triumph that comes with flipping the bird to the patriarchy. That was just *chef’s kiss* So I can very much forgive the disjointed be a Good Girl flashbacks, when it all comes together so beautifully and powerfully in the end.

saving princesses requires sensible footwear.

It’s not an easy journey to that end, though. A Hunger of Thorns is surprisingly (and delightfully) complex, far from straightforward, and one of the things I massively appreciated was the way this book is a sharp, thorny reminder that young people are still people. It’s something a lot of adults (bizarrely, imo) forget, and the adults around Maude are very quick to make decisions for her without her input – without even considering that they need it. Even the grown-ups who ought to be in her corner – even the ones who are in her corner – fail or betray her in ways that are all-too-believable, and although it was heartbreaking, it was part of what made this book so powerful. Maude is her own driving force, the driving force of the whole book, and while she does collect friends and allies eventually, I was still struck by how much she felt like a real teen making real, tough, scary calls because she has to. And because she can, and will, and does, because even if she is young she is still a person who can make those calls and determine her own story. She is not incapable because of her age, even if too many adults think she is.

(For the record, as best I can work out, Maude is sixteen or so, maybe a bit younger. She does read more fourteen or fifteen than sixteen to me, but most importantly, she reads as real. I don’t know how to put it better than that.)

And Wilkinson really does go hard when it comes to the failure of even the most well-intentioned adults; of how sometimes you need protecting from the ones who are trying to protect you. (Or who should be trying to protect you.) That struck a deep chord, and it hurt, and it was true.

It was good.

In fairy tales, lost boys get to marry princesses and rule over kingdoms. But lost girls go home and everything returns to how it was. They are grateful to be home and for everything they once took for granted. They swear off adventures for good.

I don’t want to be a lost boy or a lost girl. I feel like my story is only just beginning.

I think this is the start of a series, which is wonderful, because there were a few bits of the worldbuilding that I really want more clarification on – the kingdom of birds??? – and it’s very clear that this is only the beginning of Maude’s story. Honestly, the ending really gives the impression that things are about to go – ahem – nuclear, and I am so very here for it!

This is a beautiful, unexpected, twisty book, with sharp thorns and soft petals. It’s a story about stories: their power, their wonder, bringing them to life (oh is it ever about bringing stories to life); about retelling and reclaiming and reimagining; it is about transcending, not just the stories you tell for fun, but the stories you tell about the world and about yourself. A Hunger of Thorns was not a book I knew to anticipate; it snuck up on me like a secret and a surprise, and it delighted me utterly.

I can only recommend it to you in the strongest possible terms!

The post Consider Me Enchanted: A Hunger of Thorns by Lili Wilkinson appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

I Can’t Wait For…Dark Moon, Shallow Sea by David R. Slayton

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 Dark Moon, Shallow Sea by David R. Slayton!

Dark Moon, Shallow Sea (The Gods of Night and Day Series) by David R. Slayton
Genres: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: M/M
Published on: 31st October 2023
Goodreads

Raef wants revenge on the knights who killed his goddess, the moon. Her death darkened the night sky, stopped the tides, and left the shades of the dead without a path to the underworld.

Seeking revenge, Raef breaks into the knights’ temple and opens a box, expecting to find gold and jewels among the bones. Instead, he finds a living man, Kinos, sleeping inside.

Raef steals Kinos.

As they run from the knights and grow closer, Raef thinks he’s found a friend, love, and perhaps a secret that may lead to his goddess’s return. If they can’t solve the mystery of Kinos's imprisonment, the moon will never rise again and the world will drown in ghosts.

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Slayton’s Adam Binder series is an interesting, unconventional take on Urban Fantasy – so I’m very interested in seeing what he does with Epic Fantasy!

And I mean, come on. Look at that blurb!!! Seeking revenge for a dead goddess (whose death STOPPED THE TIDES, why does that detail delight me so???), and then SURPRISE!!!!man-in-the-treasure-chest which obviously makes Kinos the treasure, any bets on how long it will take Raef to realise that, THE REAL TREASURE IS THE MYSTERY-MAN WE FOUND ALONG THE WAY and also hi, drowning in ghosts does not sound like my idea of a good time, I think we can all agree it’s best we avoid that, yes??? yes??? Excellent.

I initially couldn’t find out if this was going to be a standalone or not, but I am VERY HAPPY that it is, in fact, the start of a series! (Can we all take a moment to appreciate how epic a series name is ‘The Gods of Day and Night’? MARVELLOUS!) That means things are going to be COMPLICATED, enough for multiple books, and hopefully more pages means we’ll get plenty of worldbuilding because yes, obviously I am excited about that, how are you even surprised, it’s like you don’t even know me!

Ahem.

(For real though I have so many questions about the worldbuilding and backstory, and one of them is ‘So the sun’s a god too, right???’ and another is ‘BUT HOW DO YOU KILL A GODDESS AND ALSO WHY WOULD YOU DO SOMETHING THAT STUPID, YOU STUPID, STUPID KNIGHTS?!’

Ahem.)

Suffice to say I am most excited to pounce on this come October!

The post I Can’t Wait For…Dark Moon, Shallow Sea by David R. Slayton appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday #132

TEN books this week!

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

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Sapphic MC, Black secondary character, nonbinary aliens
Published on: 11th April 2023
Goodreads

A thrillingly told queer space opera about the wreckage of war, the family you find, and who you must become when every choice is stripped from you, Some Desperate Glory is Astounding Award Winner Emily Tesh’s highly anticipated debut novel.

While we live, the enemy shall fear us.

Since she was born, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she readies herself to face the Wisdom, the powerful, reality-shaping weapon that gave the majoda their victory over humanity.

They are what’s left. They are what must survive. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. When Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to Nursery to bear sons until she dies trying, she knows she must take humanity's revenge into her own hands.

Alongside her brother’s brilliant but seditious friend and a lonely, captive alien, Kyr escapes from everything she’s known into a universe far more complicated than she was taught and far more wondrous than she could have imagined.

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If you’re an SFF fan, you must have heard the hype for Some Desperate Glory – and I happen to think it’s all justified. I was stunned to see how much story Tesh manages to pack into a standalone, without, imo, ever feeling rushed or cramped. This is one hell of a debut, folx.

My review!

Tauhou by Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall
Genres: Speculative Fiction
Representation: Indigenous cast
Published on: 11th April 2023
Goodreads

An inventive exploration of Indigenous families, womanhood, and alternate post-colonial realities by a writer of Māori and Coast Salish descent.

Tauhou envisions a shared past between two Indigenous cultures, set on reimagined versions of Vancouver Island and Aotearoa that sit side by side in the ocean. Each chapter in this innovative hybrid novel is a fable, an autobiographical memory, a poem. A monster guards cultural objects in a museum, a woman uncovers her own grave, another woman remembers her estranged father. On rainforest beaches and grassy dunes, sisters and cousins contend with the ghosts of the past — all the way back to when the first foreign ships arrived on their shores.

In a testament to the resilience of Indigenous women, the two sides of this family, Coast Salish and Māori, must work together in understanding and forgiveness to heal that which has been forced upon them by colonialism. Tauhou is an ardent search for answers, for ways to live with truth. It is a longing for home, to return to the land and sea.

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I heard about this one by chance just in time to include it in today’s post, and I’m so glad I did, because it sounds so interesting! Sounds like the kind of alternate history I adore.

A Flame in the Night by Morgan Dante
Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: M/M/F polyamory
Published on: 11th April 2023
Goodreads

The start of bloody decadence...

The definition of marriage: Two people and their silver-haired vampire.

In 1924, Paris is a bastion of sexual freedom, even for shell-shocked Leon Laflamme, the most dramatic blond this side of the Seine. After years of loneliness and secrecy, he's married the clever and sumptuous burlesque dancer Claire. However, Leon truly finds liberation when he meets the stoic, intriguing, and silver-haired Count Matthias, who offers true freedom in his dark gift: immortality.

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This sounds utterly delicious and like SO MUCH FUN, and I’ve been looking forward to it for ages! I can’t remember where I read a sample of this, but the writing was gorgeous, so there is absolutely NOTHING holding me back from pouncing on it tomorrow!

I mean, come on. ‘The definition of marriage: Two people and their silver-haired vampire.’ That is just PERFECT!

Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee
Genres: Fantasy, Secondary World No Magic
Representation: Persian cast and setting
Published on: 11th April 2023
Goodreads

From World Fantasy Award-winning author Fonda Lee comes Untethered Sky, an epic fantasy fable about the pursuit of obsession at all costs.

Ester’s family was torn apart when a manticore killed her mother and baby brother, leaving her with nothing but her father’s painful silence and a single, overwhelming need to kill the monsters that took her family.

Ester’s path leads her to the King’s Royal Mews, where the giant rocs of legend are flown to hunt manticores by their brave and dedicated rukhers. Paired with a fledgling roc named Zahra, Ester finds purpose and acclaim by devoting herself to a calling that demands absolute sacrifice and a creature that will never return her love. The terrifying partnership between woman and roc leads Ester not only on the empire’s most dangerous manticore hunt, but on a journey of perseverance and acceptance.

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This is much more a book about falconry-with-giant-birds than it is revenge, but it’s still great, and I very much appreciated Lee’s featuring one of the scariest mythological monsters I know of (old-school manticores!)

My review!

Wings Once Cursed and Bound (Mythwoven, #1) by Piper J. Drake
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy
Representation: Thai MC
Published on: 11th April 2023
Goodreads

For fans of Sarah J. Maas and Jennifer Armentrout comes a bold and captivating fantasy by bestselling author Piper J. Drake.

My wings unbound, I am the Thai bird princess
The kinnaree
And no matter the cost,
I will be free.

Bennet Andrews represents a secret organization of supernatural beings dedicated to locating and acquiring mythical objects, tucking them safely away where they cannot harm the human race. When he meets Peeraphan Rahttana, it's too late—she has already stepped into The Red Shoes, trapped by their curse to dance to her death.

But Bennet isn't the only supernatural looking for deadly artifacts. And when the shoes don't seem to harm Peeraphan, he realizes that he'll have to save her from the likes of creatures she never knew existed. Bennett sweeps Peeraphan into a world of myth and power far beyond anything she ever imagined. There, she finds that magic exists in places she never dreamed—including deep within herself.

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From the blurb, I think Drake is pulling from Thai mythology, and that’s not something we see often at all – and which I would very much like to explore. So I’m cautiously hopeful about this one!

Master of Souls (Kingdom of Souls, #3) by Rena Barron
Genres: Fantasy
Representation: African-coded cast
Published on: 11th April 2023
Goodreads

A king with a score to settle.
A demon driven to rebel.
A girl who holds the power of the gods.

Arrah has paid many prices in her battle against the Demon King. Now, she must decipher the legacy of her past and weave an uneasy alliance between her beloved Rudjek, the Demon King, and the remaining orishas, hoping to restore peace to all their worlds. But as Arrah’s half-demon sister regains her strength and resumes her quest for destruction, peace may require the ultimate sacrifice.

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This is the finale to Barron’s Kingdom of Souls trilogy, and I have high hopes for it! But make sure you start with book one, if you’ve not been following the series so far.

The Grief Nurse by Angie Spoto
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Speculative Fiction
Representation: Pansexual MC
Published on: 13th April 2023
Goodreads

Imagine you could be rid of your sadness, your anxiety, your heartache, your fear.

Imagine you could take those feelings from others and turn them into something beautiful.

Lynx is a Grief Nurse. Kept by the Asters, a wealthy, influential family, to ensure they’re never troubled by negative emotions, she knows no other life.

When news arrives that the Asters’ eldest son is dead, Lynx does what she can to alleviate their Sorrow. As guests flock to the Asters’ private island for the wake, bringing their own secrets, lies and grief, tensions rise.

Then the bodies start to pile up.

With romance, intrigue and spectacular gothic world-building, this spellbinding debut novel is immersive and unforgettable.

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Definitely the book I’m most excited for this week, and proud claimant of a spot on my most anticipated SFF of 2023 list, I am SO READY to finally get to read this!

Eyes Guts Throat Bones by Moïra Fowley-Doyle
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, Speculative Fiction
Representation: Queer MCs
Published on: 13th April 2023
Goodreads

What will the end of the world look like?

Will it be an old man slowly turned to gold, flowers raining from the sky, or a hole cut through the wire fencing that keeps the monsters out?

Is it someone you love wearing your face, or a good old fashioned inter-dimensional summoning?

Does it sound like a howl outside the window, or does it look like coming home?

This startling and irresistibly witty collection from the phenomenally talented Moïra Fowley is an exploration of all our darkest impulses and deepest fears.

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Consider me darkly enchanted. I’ve been reading more short story collections recently, and this is one I very much want to pounce on!

Death by Silver by Melissa Scott, Amy Griswold
Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: M/M
Published on: 13th April 2023
Goodreads

His practice newly established, metaphysician Ned Mathey can’t afford to turn away any clients. But the latest Londoner to seek Ned’s magical aid gives him pause: Mr Edgar Nevett, an arrogant banker, is the father of the bully who made Ned’s life hell at boarding school. Nevertheless, Ned accepts the commission to ensure the Nevett family silver bears no ancient or modern curses, and then prepares to banish the Nevett family to unpleasant memory again. Until Edgar Nevett is killed by an enchanted silver candlestick—one of the pieces Ned declared magically harmless.

Calling on his old school friend Julian Lynes—private detective and another victim of the younger Nevett—Ned races to solve the murder, clear the stain on his professional reputation, and lay to rest the ghosts of his past.

Assisted by Ned’s able secretary Miss Frost, who has unexpected metaphysical skills of her own, Ned and Julian explore London’s criminal underworld and sodomitical demimonde, uncover secrets and scandals, confront the unexpected murderer and the mysteries of their own relationship.

In Death by Silver veteran authors Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold introduce a Victorian London where magic works, influencing every aspect of civilized life, and two very appealing detectives.

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I read the first edition of Death By Silver back when it was published through Lethe Press, and I am happy to assure you that it is marvellous. I’m so glad this series is getting republished – and I’ve heard that brand new instalments are in the works! Definitely a good time to pick this up, if you’ve not read this series before!

Thorns of Chaos by Jeremiah Cain
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Gay MC
Published on: 13th March 2023
Goodreads

“Cain crafts a vivid world ... rich with detail and myth-lore that traipses brightly through the darker themes of oppression and suffering.” —BookLife Reviews

Queer Grimdark Fantasy: Finn is no hero, chosen born, or noble. Despite escalating tensions from the Dayigan soldier’s occupation of Feah lands, the happy-go-lucky twenty-five-year-old is content to spend his days fishing and flirting with the other men in his Celtic-like village. But everything changes at their midyear’s eve festival when an angry Dayigan commander catches Finn in the arms of another man. Suddenly framed for murder, he must flee his village or face death.

However, Finn isn’t the Dayigans’ only target. They believe all Feahs are wicked and intend to destroy them by any means necessary. The Feahs’ one hope of stopping the reign of terror is to find a relic forged by dark faeries and able to control chaos magic—and claim it to protect themselves. With the fate of the Feah lands resting on his shoulders, Finn seeks out sorcerers who practice ancient, forbidden magic.

Instead, he finds love with the handsome but fierce head of the sorcerers—and a power he never knew he could possess.

But when the Dayigans strike, can Finn harness the perilous magic to save his people without losing himself in the process?

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The reviews I’ve seen for Thorns of Chaos have all been very positive, so I will probably give it a try – although it does describe itself as a queer grimdark fantasy, and I usually don’t have the stomach for grimdark. Can still make the attempt, though!

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

The post Must-Have Monday #132 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Sticks The Landing: The Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee

Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee
Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy
Representation: Persian cast and setting
Published on: 11th April 2023
ISBN: 1250842476
Goodreads

From World Fantasy Award-winning author Fonda Lee comes Untethered Sky, an epic fantasy fable about the pursuit of obsession at all costs.

Ester’s family was torn apart when a manticore killed her mother and baby brother, leaving her with nothing but her father’s painful silence and a single, overwhelming need to kill the monsters that took her family.

Ester’s path leads her to the King’s Royal Mews, where the giant rocs of legend are flown to hunt manticores by their brave and dedicated rukhers. Paired with a fledgling roc named Zahra, Ester finds purpose and acclaim by devoting herself to a calling that demands absolute sacrifice and a creature that will never return her love. The terrifying partnership between woman and roc leads Ester not only on the empire’s most dangerous manticore hunt, but on a journey of perseverance and acceptance.

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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~old-school manticores
~rocs are the real rockstars
~passionate people are just more interesting

You know when a book is a perfectly lovely reading experience, there’s nothing to criticise, but you kind of instantly forget about it when it’s over? The Untethered Sky was like that for me – an objectively good book, but one that didn’t leave much of an impression. I don’t have any strong feelings about it. This review definitely isn’t going to be an angry rant, but it won’t be all passionate praise-poetry either.

This is a novella about a woman who hunts the manticores that plague her kingdom with the roc – a supernaturally large bird of prey – that she raised and trained from chick-hood. (Is that a thing? Chick-hood? It doesn’t sound like it’s a thing.) Although the deaths of her mother and brother at the hands of a manticore definitely helped nudge her towards her career, this really doesn’t feel or read like a revenge story. Rather than being obsessed with hunting manticores, I think it would be much more accurate to say that Ester is obsessed with Zahra, her roc.

And I actually thought that was a pretty interesting angle: Lee makes it very clear, through Ester, that rukhers are generally pretty odd people; obsessed with their rocs and the munitae of their rearing, training, and care; insular and isolated, serving society but not really a part of it; and mostly indifferent to the world outside of the Royal Mews. I love getting to hear from people who are very passionate about their Thing, whatever that might be, and I liked the approach of making rukhers out to be oddball obsessives rather than revered badasses. It felt more believable, and for me at least, it made the rukhers much more interesting.

It was easy to read them all as autistics sharing a special interest, really. Ester herself definitely comes across as autistic-coded, but I’m not sure if that was intentional. It made her easy for me to relate to, anyway.

It’s very clear that Lee did a lot of research for this story – or possibly is into falconry herself. But I admit to being a bit disappointed by all that realism – I was hoping the rocs would be a little magical, a little more intelligent than ‘normal’ birds, and that’s not the case. Which means Untethered Sky doesn’t really qualify as an animal-companion story, since it’s made very clear that the rocs are ultimately pretty indifferent to their handlers, and even sometimes abandon them. I need more of a bond between human and non-human animal to consider a book an animal-companion story.

But I really liked the worldbuilding, and how the rocs fit into it. The Persian setting is wonderful, and the manticores are properly terrifying – although I didn’t need much convincing there, since I’ve been scared of manticores since I was 8! On which note, it’s worth mentioning that Lee’s manticores are the old-school, traditional kind, not the winged-lion-with-scorpion-tail creatures that dominate if you do an image search for ‘manticore’. I’m not sure where this winged kind came from – maybe Dungeons & Dragons? – but I can assure you that the traditional kind are FAR scarier!

The plot features a surprisingly (but delightfully) modern kind of ‘quest’ – a celebrity roc tour; and now I write it out I see the pun! – and I genuinely adored how predictable the great climax of the story was in hindsight; Lee crafts a foregone conclusion that still took me by gut-wrenching surprise, and I can do nothing but applaud. Untethered Sky feels carefully- and well-crafted; all the pieces coming neatly together, all of the story fitting perfectly into the low page count. This is not one of those times when a novella feels too short for the story it contains; here, it’s exactly right, with an ending that also managed to be completely correct – even if it wasn’t at all the one I wanted!

A good, solid read for those who don’t want their narrative conflict to always mean combat, and anyone looking for a story where the animals are the stars!

The post Sticks The Landing: The Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

I Can’t Wait For…Cassiel’s Servant by Jacqueline Carey

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 Cassiel’s Servant by Jacqueline Carey!

Cassiel's Servant by Jacqueline Carey
Genres: Fantasy, High Fantasy
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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TW/CW for discussions of child abuse. (Related to my past, not the book!)

It is not an exaggeration to say that Kushiel’s Dart was a formative book for me. When I read it, I had just escaped (and no, that’s not an exaggeration either) from my abusive, Roman Catholic mother, who had beaten me black and blue for (amongst other things) writing down snippets of my sexual fantasies, my way of tentatively exploring my sexuality. (Exploring with, you know, practice, especially with other people, did not appeal, which in hindsight should have been my first clue I was ace.)

Which made sensual, sex-positive Kushiel’s Dart a revelation. Sex was not bad. It wasn’t shameful. It could even be beautiful. These were ideas I’d never encountered before, and this one book gently dissolved my fear and guilt around sex before they could calcify into something I’d struggle with for the rest of my life.

Even more important was the precept love as thou wilt, the one commandment of Phedre’s people. Kushiel’s Dart reached me only weeks after I’d discovered the concept of queerness, and I’m so lucky – and grateful – that it did so before I could absorb my conservative family’s opinions of it. But love as thou wilt didn’t just convince me that there was nothing wrong – or even noteworthy – about being queer. In the books, it doesn’t just apply to sex and romance; it’s about following your heart in all other aspects of your life, too.

I followed mine away from the lifeplan my family had mapped out for me, all the way across a continent, and I regret absolutely nothing.

But I doubt I’d have been brave enough to do it if Kushiel’s Dart hadn’t arrived in my life when it did; when I was young enough that love as thou wilt became an intrinsic part of my life philosophy.

So it goes without saying that I could not be happier, or more excited, to return to the Kushiel Universe with Cassiel’s Servant; especially as it’s not the start of a new series, but a companion to Kushiel’s Dart specifically, adding a whole new perspective on, and more depth and insight into, the book that’s had more of an impact on my life than any other.

I just got approved for an arc of Cassiel’s Servant yesterday. I’m going to reread Kushiel’s Dart (again) first, but after that?

I can’t wait to read it.

The post I Can’t Wait For…Cassiel’s Servant by Jacqueline Carey appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday #131

A very good haul indeed: TEN books of interest this week!

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

The Winter Knight by Jes Battis
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Gay autistic MC, ace-spectrum sapphic MC, major Asian-American trans character
Published on: 4th April 2023
Goodreads

Arthurian legends are reborn in this upbeat queer urban fantasy with a mystery at its heart

The knights of the round table are alive in Vancouver, but when one winds up dead, it’s clear the familiar stories have taken a left turn. Hildie, a Valkyrie and the investigator assigned to the case, wants to find the killer — and maybe figure her life out while she’s at it. On her short list of suspects is Wayne, an autistic college student and the reincarnation of Sir Gawain, who these days is just trying to survive in a world that wasn’t made for him. After finding himself at the scene of the crime, Wayne is pulled deeper into his medieval family history while trying to navigate a new relationship with the dean’s charming assistant, Burt — who also happens to be a prime murder suspect. To figure out the truth, Wayne and Hildie have to connect with dangerous forces: fallen knights, tricky runesmiths, the Wyrd Sisters of Gastown. And a hungry beast that stalks Wayne’s dreams.

The Winter Knight is a propulsive urban fairy tale and detective story with queer and trans heroes that asks what it means to be a myth, who gets to star in these tales, and ultimately, how we make our stories our own.

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I absolutely adored this very unconventional take on the nature of legends, with reincarnated Arthurian knights running round being queer in Vancouver. It should be noted that this is not a retelling; it’s very much its own original story that muses on the Arthurian mythos without just regurgitating it. It’s a pretty introspective and dreamy fantasy that also features heavy Nordic influences, which turned out to be a GREAT mix with all the King Arthur stuff!

You can read my review here!

The Way Home: Two Novellas from the World of The Last Unicorn (The Last Unicorn) by Peter S. Beagle
Genres: Fantasy
Published on: 4th April 2023
Goodreads

One brand-new, long-awaited novella, and one Hugo and Nebula award winning novella, both featuring characters from the beloved classic The Last Unicorn, from renowned fantasy writer Peter S. Beagle.

Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn is one of fantasy's most beloved classics, with millions of copies in print worldwide.

Beagle's long-awaited return to the world of that novel came with "Two Hearts," which garnered Hugo and Nebula awards in 2006, and continued the stories of the unicorn, Molly Grue, and Schmendrick the Magician from the point of view of a young girl named Sooz.

In this volume, Peter S. Beagle also presents for the first time "Sooz," a novella that sees the narrator of "Two Hearts," all grown up and with a perilous journey ahead of her, in a tender meditation on love, loss, and finding your true self.

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I love unicorns, but I’m actually not much of a Last Unicorn fan (I realise this is basically heresy!) That doesn’t mean I’m not interested in revisiting that world, though, and there was no way I wasn’t going to include The Way Home as one of this week’s releases-of-interest!

A Woman of the Sword by Anna Smith Spark
Genres: Fantasy
Published on: 4th April 2023
Goodreads

A Woman of the Sword is an epic fantasy seen through the eyes of an ordinary woman. Lidae is a daughter, a wife, a mother - and a great warrior born to fight. Her sword is hungry for killing, her right hand is red with blood.

War is very much a woman's business. But war is not kind to women. And war is not kind to mothers and their sons.

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I am wary of Spark’s reputation as a writer of grimdark – which I often don’t have the stomach for – but I’m really curious about main characters who are also mothers, especially in the kind of setting Spark is likely to create. So I will be checking this one out for sure!

Of Blood, Bones, and Truth (Brimstone and Fire, #1) by T.M. Ledvina
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: M/M
Published on: 4th April 2023
Goodreads

Kellan Manchester, an indentured political assassin, wants to lead a life of his own choosing. But as one of the Fallen - celestial descendants who are still paying for their ancestor’s mistakes - he has no choice but to do as he’s commanded.

All Cassian Evermore wants is to pay off his father’s debts and ensure his mother’s safety. Being forced to work for someone he hates is soul-crushing, but when he meets Legion assassin Kellan in the garden of a target’s home, he can’t help but wonder if he’s finally found something interesting.

Thanks to a fortuitous meeting in a nightclub, the two men form a tentative agreement to work together to solve a brutal string of murders in Spiral City. Kellan finds himself struggling to connect the dots, while Cassian juggles the emotional toll of targeting someone he’s come to see as a friend.

And neither of them can ignore their budding feelings for one another, even while the bodies continue to pile up.

Kellan and Cassian are two men with no control over their own fates - but this case could spell the same for the entire world.

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I am cautiously intrigued by the reference to a ‘celestial heritage’ – could Ledvina be playing with a new take on the mythos of the Nephilim, maybe? I’m very into angelic lore, so I’ll probably give this a go to check out the magic and worldbuilding.

Blood Debts by Terry J. Benton-Walker
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Black MC, Black gay MC
Published on: 4th April 2023
Goodreads

Thirty years ago, a young woman was murdered, a family was lynched, and New Orleans saw the greatest magical massacre in its history. In the days that followed, a throne was stolen from a queen.

On the anniversary of these brutal events, Clement and Cristina Trudeau—the sixteen-year-old twin heirs to the powerful, magical, dethroned family—are mourning their father and caring for their sick mother. Until, by chance, they discover their mother isn’t sick—she’s cursed. Cursed by someone on the very magic council their family used to rule. Someone who will come for them next.

Cristina, once a talented and dedicated practitioner of Generational magic, has given up magic for good. An ancient spell is what killed their father and she was the one who cast it. For Clement, magic is his lifeline. A distraction from his anger and pain. Even better than the random guys he hooks up with.

Cristina and Clement used to be each other’s most trusted confidant and friend, now they barely speak. But if they have any hope of discovering who is coming after their family, they’ll have to find a way to trust each other and their family's magic, all while solving the decades-old murder that sparked the still-rising tensions between the city’s magical and non-magical communities. And if they don't succeed, New Orleans may see another massacre. Or worse.

Terry J. Benton-Walker's contemporary fantasy debut, Blood Debts, with powerful magical families, intergenerational curses, and deadly drama in New Orleans.

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I have heard many good things about Blood Debts, and I always have high hopes for releases from Tor! Pretty excited to finally be getting to read this one!

Spell Bound by F.T. Lukens
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: M/M
Published on: 4th April 2023
Goodreads

Two rival apprentice sorcerers must team up to save their teachers and protect their own magic in this lively young adult romantic adventure from the New York Times bestselling author of In Deeper Waters and So This Is Ever After.

Edison Rooker isn’t sure what to expect when he enters the office of Antonia Hex, the powerful sorceress who runs a call center for magical emergencies. He doesn’t have much experience with hexes or curses. Heck, he doesn’t even have magic. But he does have a plan—to regain the access to the magical world he lost when his grandmother passed.

Antonia is…intimidating, but she gives him a job and a new name—Rook—both of which he’s happy to accept. Now all Rook has to do is keep his Spell Binder, an illegal magical detection device, hidden from the Magical Consortium. And contend with Sun, the grumpy and annoyingly cute apprentice to Antonia’s rival colleague, Fable. But dealing with competition isn’t so bad; as Sun seems to pop up more and more, and Rook minds less and less.

But when the Consortium gets wind of Rook’s Spell Binder, they come for Antonia. All alone, Rook runs to the only other magical person he knows: Sun. Except Fable has also been attacked, and now Rook and Sun have no choice but to work together to get their mentors back…or face losing their magic forever.

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I’m intrigued by the premise, and again, I’ve heard some pretty good things about this one (though I can’t remember where). Guess we’ll see how it goes!

Once There Was by Kiyash Monsef
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy
Representation: Iraniam American MC
Published on: 4th April 2023
Goodreads

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them meets Neil Gaiman in this thrilling novel about an Iranian American girl who discovers that her father was secretly a veterinarian to magical creatures—and that she must take up his mantle, despite the many dangers.

Once was, once wasn’t.

So began the stories Marjan’s father told her as a little girl—fables like the story of the girl who sprung a unicorn from a hunter’s snare, or the nomad boy who rescued a baby shirdal. Tales of mythical beasts that filled her with curiosity and wonder.

But Marjan’s not a little girl anymore. In the wake of her father’s sudden death, she is trying to hold it all together: her schoolwork, friendships, and keeping her dad’s shoestring veterinary practice from going under. Then, one day, she receives a visitor who reveals something stunning: Marjan’s father was no ordinary veterinarian. The creatures out of the stories he told her were real—and he traveled the world to care for them. And now that he’s gone, she must take his place.

Marjan steps into a secret world hidden in plain sight, where magical creatures are bought and sold, treasured and trapped. She finds friends she never knew she needed—a charming British boy who grew up with a griffon, a runaway witch seeking magic and home—while trying to hide her double life from her old friends and classmates.

The deeper Marjan gets into treating these animals, the closer she comes to finding who killed her father—and to a shocking truth that will reawaken her sense of wonder and put humans and beasts in the gravest of danger.

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This made it onto my most anticipated SFF of 2023 list, and my excitement has not waned! MAGICAL CREATURES VET HAS GOT TO BE ONE OF THE BEST JOBS EVER! And it’s one I don’t get to read about nearly often enough, so yes, I am HYPED for this one!!!

Femme Fairytales by Monroe Wildrose
Genres: Fantasy
Representation: Mid- and plus-sized MCs
Published on: 5th April 2023
Goodreads

Femme Fairytales is a series of short fairytale retellings that feature mid-size and plus-size female main characters. Follow these stories as each author offers a unique take on a classic fairytale, sure to leave you turning pages and wishing all fairytale books were like this one.

Featuring retellings of: Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Little Mermaid, The Nightingale in the Mosque, The Princess and the Pea, Hansel and Gretel, The Goose Girl, and more!

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I’m curious about how different the usual fairytales will be with bigger protagonists; I really hope this is a good collection, because we definitely need more heroines (and heroes!) who get to be fat and awesome. I don’t know so much about other genres, but fantasy in particular has a very long history of really blatant fatphobia, which I’d love to see stamped out already.

The Modern Mythos Anomaly by Juniper Lake Fitzgerald
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: M/M
Published on: 7th April 2023
Goodreads

"Memory's haunt conjures the most arrant of ghosts..."

Python is a drifter, a vampire living his eternal life on the road and liking it that way. Beholden to nothing and certainly to no one.But such a lifestyle doesn’t come without creating enemies. Most notably, a pesky vampire hunter he cant seem to shake.When he stumbles upon a seemingly abandoned cabin the woods, Python sees the perfect escape and a place to hide.

But what he didn’t expect was for someone to be home…

When recluse warlock Calysto’s peaceful life is upended by the arrival of a chaotic disaster in the form of a loudmouthed vampire, he and his teleporting house become the target of the hunter, too.

Calysto knows it’s all Python’s fault that he’s in this mess. That is, until Calysto makes a mistake, and in his hurry to flee transports them over one hundred years into the past.

Confronted with lives they both had hoped to forget, not to mention the memories they most definitely did, Calysto and Python must try to put aside their many differences and increasingly complicated feelings to learn to work together. Or else they risk being stuck in the past -- and with each other -- forever.

This is an adult book with themes that are not suitable for minors. Content warnings are included before the title page, available for view within the sample.

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Who wouldn’t want a teleporting house??? Although the blurb seems to imply it can maybe also teleport through time??? Definitely interesting enough to check out!

Tell Me How It Ends by Quinton Li
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Autistic lesbian MC with anxiety, nonbinary aroace MC with ADHD
Published on: 9th April 2023
Goodreads

A coming-of-age cozy fantasy with a queer cast, witches, and tarot. Perfect for fans of Legends & Lattes and Our Flag Means Death

Iris Galacia's tarot cards do more than entertain gamblers.

With the flip of her fingers she can predict the future and uncover a person's secrets. But under the watchful eye of her mother, she is on thin ice for pursuing a passion in the family business, and then cracks start to form until she eventually she falls through.
She is given an ultimatum — a test to prove her worth: earn a thousand coins or leave the business, and the family.

Enter Marin Boudreau, a charming young person who can scale buildings and break off doorknobs, who comes for her help to rescue a witch who's been falsely imprisoned in Excava Kingdom.

And Marin is willing to pay a high sum for her talents.

But saving a prisoner from royal hands isn't easy, nor is leaving home for the first time in eighteen years.

Now Iris must learn to trust in herself, Marin, and this new magical world, while racing the clock before the royals decide the fate of the witch, and before any secrets catch up to her.

TELL ME HOW IT ENDS features LGBTQ+, disabled, neurodivergent, cultural, and mental health representation. The main character, Iris Galacia, is a lesbian tarot reader with anxiety and autism. The second main character, Marin Boudreau, is an aromantic asexual non-binary person with ADHD.

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I did DNF my arc of this, but it was very much an it’s not you it’s me thing, so I do encourage you to give it a go if the premise sounds interesting to you!

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

The post Must-Have Monday #131 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

It Doesn’t Get Better: The Ships of Merior by Janny Wurts

The Ships of Merior (Wars of Light and Shadow, #2) by Janny Wurts
Genres: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy
ISBN: B004FN1QDI
Goodreads

A powerful, layered weaving of myth, prose and pure imagination – The Ships of Merior continues an epic fantasy series perfect for enthusiasts of The Dark Tower and Earthsea.

The second volume of Janny Wurts's incomparable series following Arithon and Lysaer, two brothers forced to take opposite sides in a relentless conflict.

After defeating the malevolent fog that blighted Athera, Arithon and Lysaer battle the throes of the Mistwraith's insidious retribution: a curse set upon them at their moment of triumph compels them each to seek the other's downfall.

Lysaer, the charming and charismatic Lord of Light, drives his brother out of hiding and hounds Arithon with a massive army at his command. Meanwhile Arithon, Master of Shadow, the sensitive mage who prefers music to violence, must take to the seas to evade capture and strike back against Lysaer's mighty war host.

Locked into lifelong enmity, the brothers’ pursuit of each other's destruction will test the foundations of human morailty, even as threat to the world’s deepest magic rides on the outcome.

THE SHIPS OF MERIOR weaves a rich and complicated tapestry, bringing readers deeper into the mystical world of Athera. Striking a balance between epic scope and intricate subtlety, the Wars of Light and Shadow is a must-read series for readers of intelligent fantasy.

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~sure, send the ghost-guy to outer space
~nO guNPowDEr FoR yoU
~timeskipping 6 years but this book is 6 years long
~what are sorcerers even for
~this was meant to be a mini-review but it turned into a rant

Why, you may I ask, would I continue with The Wars of Light and Shadow series when I absolutely despised the first book? Sensible question with a fairly silly answer: my husband and I have discovered that these books are EXCELLENT insomnia cures! My reading aloud to him as he goes to sleep stops his brain from Not Shutting Up, and the books themselves bore me into putting down my ereader and curling up to sleep.

So how does The Ships of Merior do as a book as opposed to a sleeping aid?

To put it mildly: not great.

The writing has not improved from its problems in the first book – overblown, pretentious, stuffed with preachy telling-not-showing, a frustrating insistence on referring to the same character by three or four different epithets rather than repeat their name even once, and over-explaining to the point of massively slowing down passages that are trying to be fast-punchy-action scenes. We continue to have random little side-plots that do nothing but take up space (Arithon, why the fuck did you give her that ring?!), which can’t disguise the fact that there is still far too little story to fit a 700+ pagecount. The difference is made up with a why use one word when ten will do? philosophy that I would appreciate more if the prose was beautiful enough to linger over – which it isn’t.

The magic system continues to be extremely hand-wavey. This is actually not in and of itself a problem for me – I love soft magic systems – but the issue is that because we have no idea how the magic works, Wurts has to explain to us why we should be impressed or nervous or scared when Big Magic Things happen, and that slows down and stretches out those scenes immensely. Which undercuts any sense of thrill or urgency. Turning your Big Epic Sorcery moments into long-winded lectures ruins those moments.

Either leave us with cinematic visuals and nothing else, or teach us enough about how the magic works – beforehand! – that we understand for ourselves how impressive The Thing is when it happens. But don’t lecture us about it in the moment. Because then your pacing, and the power of the scene, is fucked.

Another writerly thing I forgot to critique in my review of book one, which gets worse in Merior: don’t start all your Fantasy Nouns with the same letter. So many characters and places and objects in this series so far start with A: Arithon, Asandir, Ath, Athera, Alestron, Athlieria, Avenor, Althain – this is simply bad writing practice. Especially when a lot of these (and this isn’t even all of them) are often used close together, or are used repeatedly and aren’t a one-off, throwaway mention. You know why? Because all those words start to blur together, and it becomes way too hard to keep them all straight.

The alphabet has 25 other letters. USE THEM!

I regret to inform you that the fatphobia from Curse of the Mistwraith is still rampant in this book. It’s embarrassingly easy to spot which characters we’re supposed to despise (as opposed to not-like-but-grudgingly-respect or not-like-but-feel-conflicted-about) because they are, without fail, fat. They are literally and figuratively full of themselves; the way their velvets and lace are stretched across their stomachs is described over and over in any scene they appear in. To be fat is to be gross, arrogant, and stupid; there are no exceptions.

Speaking of fat characters, Dakar continues to be Not Funny and also awful, a lecherous whiny dickhead who is too stupid and biased to see what’s right in front of him – that Arithon is not a monster and not the slightest bit interested in killing his brother or anybody else. I hate how Dakar is treated by the narrative – the butt of every joke – but I also despise him as a character. I’ve now read multiple reviews where he’s described as being hilarious – sometimes he’s considered the best/favourite part of the story! – and I have no idea what other readers are seeing that I’m not. He isn’t funny. Not because he makes jokes about awful topics, but because his jokes are simply not funny, being overcomplicated and too wordy or simply making no sense.

The carter purpled and swung. The suet-round face of his target vanished as Dakar ducked and fled beneath the saddle girth. Bunched knuckles smacked against he barrel-sprung ribs of the horse, who responded from both ends with a grunt and a fart like an explosion.

‘Oh my,’ cried Dakar, stifling a chortle. ‘Your wife’s nose must look like a pudding if that’s your reaction to her kisses.’

??? I’m confused. Am I supposed to be laughing at the fart? The idea of the carter punching his wife? Dakar’s too-long-not-snappy needling? I don’t get it.

The Mad Prophet informed the man sent down to fetch him that he had never stayed sober for more than a fortnight, even as a babe at his mother’s knee. Three months was a lifetime record, Dakar insisted, as if astounded to still be alive.

That second quote, I see how it’s supposed to be funny, but even aside from the fact that the topic isn’t amusing to me, it’s just not phrased right to make me giggle. And I love comedy. Pre-Covid I used to go to amateur and professional stand-up nights; John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight show never fails to crack me up no matter how dark and dismal the topic; seeing Dara O’Brien live was one of the best nights of my life; and I watch everything Russel Howard touches. And I don’t think the issue is me being too Left Wing – I grew up in a house where Frankie Boyle was king and South Park was the norm. I definitely know the horrible hilarity the right person or writer can make you feel at things that Wow, You Really Shouldn’t Be Laughing At.

But I don’t at all understand – never mind appreciate – Wurts’ sense of humour.

Wurts also continues to massively fail at making Lysaer look like any kind of hero. I think this is partly deliberate – we know from the prologue of book one that a whole religion venerating Lysaer develops later, and demonises Arithon, and that these books are supposed to be the ‘true’ history that reveals it was all rather more complicated than Lysaer good: Arithon bad. So we’re clearly not meant to think Lysaer is perfect.

But we’re also pretty clearly meant to respect him, to believe that he’s trying to do the right thing, even if he is very wrong about what that is. We’re supposed to feel conflicted about the conflict between the two half-brothers. And I don’t. Lysaer is the (albeit unintentional) villain, and there’s been no explanation whatsoever as to why the omnibenevolent Fellowship hasn’t fucking stepped in. Okay, so they can’t lift the curse the Mistwraith put on Lysaer and Arithon – but maybe they could confine them??? Or Lysaer, at least, since he’s the one who’s spent six years building an army to murder his brother, who just wants to be left alone to play music? Put him into an enchanted sleep until you can figure out a cure, for crying out loud – he’s dragging the whole continent into a completely pointless war! DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

But they don’t. Because Reasons. Which is lazy and pathetic. Just like the instalove of Elaira for Arithon is lazy and pathetic – oh, the sorceresses are extra magically good at reading body language, are they? And that’s why she fell in love with him after five minutes six years ago, is it? She Just Knows everything about him now, does she?

So freaking stupid.

Especially because there’s no reason at all not to have had her falling in love with him over time – the instalove wasn’t even slightly necessary. She could have fallen for him in this book, where she gets to spend months with him; or if you had to have her be in love with him before this book, at least say she’s watched him from afar in visions (which would fit because the Koriani sorceresses seem to be very well-known for their scrying) these past six years and fell for him that way!

Oh, and the Koriani – the all-women magical order – continue to be weaker, less capable, and less smart than the all-male Fellowship. The Koriani are schemers who don’t have the full picture but are going ahead with their Terrible Choices anyway; but it’s fine, because they’re not powerful enough to pull off the magic required to track down Arithon, or anything. There’s hundreds of Koriani, but they are insignificant next to the five Fellowship sorcerers – who don’t consult with them, don’t share information, and who are hiding the Koriani’s greatest tool and treasure from them, cutting them off from their most powerful magics. The Fellowship are effortlessly immortal and self-healing; the Koriani’s method of extending the lifespan is not limitless, is extremely painful to undergo, and eventually leaves those who use it broken in long-term agony. The Fellowship are scholarly, wise, guardians of the world; the Koriani decide the best way to ensnare Arithon is with sex.

What the actual fuck? I know this was originally published in 1994, but – seriously??? This level of misogyny from an author who is a woman??? I understand internalised misogyny, but this is fucking ridiculous.

Finally: this isn’t a critique of the book that Wurts wrote, but it’s very much a critique of whatever editor was involved in turning this into an ebook, because I found over 200 typos in my e-edition. Ships of Merior was clearly digitised a long while after its initial publication, and that process inevitably means typos, but this is just unacceptable. Someone should have gone through the digitised file before hitting the publish button!

So if you do want to read this series, I strongly recommend getting yourself paper copies rather than reading the ebooks.

Will I be reading the next book? Yes – I’ve already started. I have no intention of giving up this good a sleep-aid until/unless it stops working! (And I’m still waiting for the unicorns to show…)

The post It Doesn’t Get Better: The Ships of Merior by Janny Wurts appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

A Myth-Making Masterpiece: Rituals by Roz Kaveney

Rituals (Rhapsody of Blood #1) by Roz Kaveney
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Brown sapphic MC, white sapphic MC, white sapphic love interest, secondary character in a wheelchair, F/F, secondary M/M
PoV: 1st-person past-tense; 3rd-person past tense; dual PoVs
Goodreads

Two women - and the workings of Time and Fate.

In a time too long ago for most human memory, a god asked Mara what she most wanted. She got her wish: to protect the weak against the strong. For millennia, she has avenged that god, and her dead sisters, against anyone who uses the Rituals of Blood to become a god through mass murder. And there are few who can stand against her.

A sudden shocking incident proves to Emma that the modern world is not what she thought it was, that there are demons and gods and elves and vampires. Her weapon is knowledge, and she pursues it wherever it leads her. The one thing she does not know is who she - and her ghostly lover, Caroline - are working for.

Rhapsody of Blood is a four-part epic fantasy not quite like anything you've read before: a helter-skelter ride through history and legend, from Tenochitlan to Los Angeles, from Atlantis to London. It is a story of death, love and the end of worlds - and of dangerous, witty women.

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~God and the Devil are exes
~ghosts make wonderful girlfriends
~all the stories are true, just not the way you think
~Do Not Anger The Luggage
~chaos magician drag-queens

First thing: ignore the cover. It’s awful, I know, but I swear to you that don’t judge a book by its cover has never been so vital as it is here.

Because this is a peerless masterpiece that deserves, not five stars, but every single star in the sky.

Rituals is two stories entwined: that of Mara and Emma. Mara is a hunter of gods from before the dawn of time; Emma is a perfectly normal student in the 80s, who ends up with a ghost for a girlfriend and a mysterious employer who wants her to deal with supernatural shenanigans. At first glance, their respective parts of the book are extremely separate – Mara is telling a select bit of her (extremely ancient) history to the occultist Crowley in order to dissuade him from trying to become a god, and Emma is mediating between angels, asshole elves, and chaos-magician drag queens in London and LA. But it all feels incredibly cohesive, especially as the ancient history experienced by Mara becomes extremely relevant to the present Emma is living in. And although the two halves of the book are pretty different, they’re both excellent, and I wouldn’t be willing to give up either one just to make Rituals easier to explain and understand!

This is a book that very much defies any attempt to easily label it; Emma’s parts are not conventional Urban Fantasy despite their setting, and Mara’s are thematically closer to High Fantasy, but not in any way you’ve seen before. Described like that, it’s a mix that doesn’t seem like it should work; Emma’s very middle-class English approach to monster doll houses, Tories, and Hollywood executives is not something you would think to pair with the fall of the Aztec Empire, the birth of the phoenix, and God and Lucifer’s origin story! And yet it all goes together magnificently, just as Emma’s superpower of Talking Sensibly contrasts beautifully with Mara’s very deadly seriousness (and complete lack of macho bullshit). The result is that, whichever half of the book initially appeals to you, you very much end up also drawn into the one you expected not to care for as much, and the lessons and messages of the one inform our understanding of the other.

Plot-wise, it goes a little like this: we’re introduced first to Mara, and learn something of her mission and the way she operates in a bit that acts almost as a prologue, and introduces the framing device of her story – that is, the fact that she’s telling it herself, in first-person, to Crowley.

But Rituals starts properly with Emma, whose parts of the book are divided by very effective time-skips (and I say this as someone who usually despises time-skips). We meet her first in 1985, at uni, where she encounters the supernatural for the first time and is summarily ‘hired’ by an anonymous sponsor who conveys her tasks to her via dropping them into the mind of her ghost girlfriend. But there is no training montage that turns Emma into a katana-wielding urban warrior; instead, it rapidly becomes clear that her superpower is, as previously mentioned, Talking Sensibly to very unsensible magical beings and creatures. She’s exactly the kind of heroine you would expect a perfectly normal, middle-class English student of the time to be; lacking in dramatic magical powers, respectful of those who deserve it, but taking absolutely no nonsense from those who don’t. Her approach to the Upper Classes of British society, in particular, is just *chef’s kiss*

Or was it a mistake to think of people of that class as even sentient in a standard sense? Sometimes it helped Emma cope to assume that they did not, in fact, think; that they were zombie pawns moved by history and economic power. The fact that she found this idea comforting was worrying.

After an encounter with a god of Ancient Egypt, we next see her in the 90s dealing with a murderous art exhibition and acting as a witness for a great dynastic marriage joining elf and vampire clans (neither of whom come out looking sexy and glamourous after Kaveney is done with them!) Still in the 90s but a few years later, she babysits a composer out to perform an opera which has been foretold to bring about the end of the world, meeting with the echo of Marilyn Monroe, clashing with someone who might be the real Ultimate Evil, and being cheeky to God in the process. (Honestly, he deserved much worse.)

Most of us have to find ways of doing magic; you, Emma Jones, can undo it as if it were a recalcitrant knot on an old shoe.”

It’s kind of impossible not to love Emma – to say nothing of Caroline, her ghostly paramour, who takes great delight in using her discorporate state to fashion herself an outfit appropriate to every moment. Her posh snark gives her some of the best lines in the book!

One of the privileges of age and power is that I do not have to listen to other people’s monologues.”

“Because they interrupt your own?”

In-between Emma’s escapades are Mara’s – or rather, some of them; it very rapidly becomes obvious that she has been alive for a very long time indeed, and a full accounting of her adventures would have a higher pagecount than the Wheel of Time. Our first glimpse of Mara in action comes as she describes the fall of the Aztecs, and her role in the…’clean up’ is probably not quite the right word, but I’m not sure what else to call it; later, we get a bit of her origin story, learn about her once-apprentices and some of the great enemies she’s faced. It’s a tiny taste of the adventures and trials she went through before the beginning of recorded human history, in contrast to seeing her interact with the ghost of Emperor Montezuma and the infamous Cortes in 1521. Both are epic, but the ‘before the dawn of time’ parts…it’s very easy to see how they would have turned into legend, is all I’m saying.

And Mara herself? Rocks. Her purpose is to prevent those who would become gods from doing so using the Rituals of Blood – which basically means human sacrifice on a massive, horrifically sadistic scale – or executing those gods who draw their power from that kind of horror. And she is very, very good at her job. But she doesn’t really fit the usual template for this kind of character; in her own narration, she comes across as cool and a little distant, and her pride is not the kind that demands she always be acknowledged as the biggest badass in the room. (This is, for the record, my favourite kind of badass; the one who is very happy to be underestimated, and simultaneously very sure and confident in their own power and ability.) It slants the shape of the story we’re used to, immediately makes it something new and interesting.

(And yet, Mara is clearly not as distant and unemotional as she seems, or why would she have dedicated herself such a thankless, endless task as that of protecting the weak from the strong? The history she relates belies the way in which she relates it, undermining the idea that she is untouchable and unhuman. She tells the story as if her part in it is almost of no matter, but clearly it matters more than anything else possibly could.)

Rituals is a pure delight for those with a special interest in mythology and the occult, but who are willing not to take those things too seriously. Packed full of references and sneaky nods to all kinds of legends, providing ‘origin stories’ for even more – like the Amazon warrior-women, Noah’s Ark, and the fall of Atlantis – this is a book swift to lambaste the more pretentious aspects of the genre (like the tongue-in-cheek depiction of elves and vampires), and one that absolutely considers religious figures as fair game. God, aka Jehovah, is treated as just another character in a dazzling cast – and neither Mara, Emma, nor yours truly are particularly impressed with him.

(For those concerned, Kaveney never comes close to suggesting that human faith and religion are something to mock or be contemptuous of; it’s only Jehovah himself that, in the context of the divine eco-system Kaveney’s designed for this series, is more than kind of a dick. A distinction that appealed to this particular raised-religious queer reader, and will probably be greatly enjoyed by others.)

Have I made it clear yet that this really isn’t like anything else you’ve ever read? I could talk about Rituals for weeks, but nothing I say is going to do it justice; reading about it cannot possibly prepare you for the experience of reading it yourself.

And you absolutely ought to read it. Because it is, to be frank, fucking magnificent. Rituals is clever, funny, sly, wry, poignant, brutal, bold, and wondrous all at once; the sheer breadth and brilliance of Kaveney’s imagination is matched only by her razor-sharp prose, which is sharp enough to cut even as it gleams. This is my fourth time reading Rituals, and the first time I’ve come anywhere close to putting my love for it into words – but I’ve only come close, not accomplished it. There is no way to praise this book (and the rest of the series!) enough; there is no way to overstate or exaggerate how convention-shatteringly superb it is.

But there’s no need to take just my word for it. Go buy a copy, and discover it for yourself.

You won’t be disappointed.

The post A Myth-Making Masterpiece: Rituals by Roz Kaveney appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.