Siavahda's Blog, page 51

I Can’t Wait For…Heart, Haunt, Havoc by Freydís Moon

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 Heart, Haunt, Havoc by Freydís Moon!

Heart, Haunt, Havoc by Freydís Moon
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Trans MC, brown Latine nonbinary love interest
Published on: 14th February 2023
Goodreads

Laced with romance, gothic imagery, Catholic mysticism, diaspora, and horror…

When lonely transgender exorcist, Colin Hart, finds himself challenged by an unruly haunted house in Gideon, Colorado, he’s kept awake by ghosts, demons, ghouls, and the handsome nonbinary owner of the house, Bishop Martínez.

Unlike the simple hauntings Colin is accustomed to, Bishop’s house is a living beacon, attracting a plethora of inhuman creatures, including a vengeful wolf-headed spirit who might be the key to quieting their sleepless nights.

But as a heartbreaking mystery unravels, Colin comes face-to-face with the past Bishop tried to bury, opens a closet full of bloody skeletons, and trips into an accidental romance.

As paranormally skilled as Colin might be, this particular haunting may be too messy for him to handle…

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The amazing cover, by the incredible M.E. Morgan, was unveiled today (well – subscribers to Moon’s newsletter got to see it last night, but it was OFFICIALLY revealed today!) which made Heart, Haunt, Havoc the obvious choice for this week’s Can’t-Wait-For!

Freydís Moon has rapidly become an auto-buy author for me; their prose is swoon-worthy, and I’m addicted to the way they play with religious themes and imagery, to say nothing of how they aren’t afraid to Go There when it comes to queerness, sex, and specifically kink. (And I say that as an ace who is usually sex-repulsed!) The trans and nonbinary rep, particularly, has always been *chef’s kiss*

And I’m genuinely excited to see Moon’s take on a haunted house – a trope that usually bores me, but this one doesn’t sound like any I’ve come across before. A wolf-headed spirit??? Plus – yesss, gimme all the Catholic magic! I generally don’t trust storytellers to give me exactly the flavour of Catholic mysticism that I want (I’m picky as fuck, this is not news) but Moon’s already done so twice, so I have no doubts this will hit the spot for me.

I just love that it’s releasing on Valentine’s Day. That is so perfect, I continue to cackle over it.

Now go hit the preorder button if you haven’t already!

The post I Can’t Wait For…Heart, Haunt, Havoc by Freydís Moon appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

In Short: January

The first month of this new year was pretty rough – my fibro’s been going haywire, and I just learned yesterday that they’re discontinuing the medication I take for it.

Thank the gods for books, amirite?

ARCs Received

I was beyond spoiled with amazing ARCs this month! I mean, just LOOK at these! So many of my most-anticipated – and so far, all the ones I’ve started reading? Have been SUBLIME.

Read

20 books read this month – five less than in December, but considering all my health issues this month, I’m satisfied. Quite a few rereads, mostly in preparation for their sequels. Lost In The Moment and Found was an excellent addition to the Wayward Children series; The Sphere of Winds was absolutely worth waiting ten years for; and I Keep My Skeletons To Myself became my first best-of-2023 read (I plan on trying to review it, but we’ll see if I can do it justice.) Whereas The Eidolon was very much my second; I wish I’d taken a picture, because I had literal goosebumps as I read the final page!

To the best of my knowledge, 12.50% of this month’s authors were BIPOC. Which is appalling; I’ve got to do better in Feb.

Reviewed

Kind of wish my first review of the year had been a positive one, but oh well! At least The Infinite was wonderful.

And I did write four DNF reviews, three of which were pretty in-depth, so REALLY, I wrote seven reviews altogether. Which is a lot for one month!

DNF-ed

Sigh. You can read my reviews of these here, but I’m really disappointed that three of my most-anticipated books turned out to be…not for me. (False Prince was a book I was challenged to read, so, still sad it didn’t work out, but not sad-sad.)

ARCs Outstanding

I’ve started just about all of these – and am tearing my hair out trying to write a review of The Twice-Drowned Saint, which is A VERY HARD BOOK TO DESCRIBE AND EXPLAIN. How does Cooney do this to me every time???

Misc

I started working on several rec lists this month, but I haven’t finished any – mostly because my fibromyalgia decided to flare pretty badly this month, which meant much less typing/writing time. Alas!

But I did get to take part in C S E Cooney’s AMA over on Reddit, which in fact happened today (is still happening? I don’t know when an AMA is considered over, so you may still be able to post questions depending on when you read this!) and where I got some answers to some very important questions – answers which have made me very happy!

Looking Forward

We had some truly marvellous books in January (not all of which I’ve finished reading!) but February promises even more! Excluding the ones I’ve already read or am in the process of reading, I am unspeakably excited for The Iron Princess – Barbara Hambly’s first new fantasy book in 16 years!!! And I’m very curious and hopeful for Dazzling, which sounds incredible.

Here’s farewell to January, and onwards to Feb!

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

January DNFs

Alas, after a few months with no DNFs, my streak is broken: there were a few this month!

The False Prince (Ascendance, #1) by Jennifer A. Nielsen
Genres: Fantasy
ISBN: 0545284139
Goodreads

In a discontent kingdom, civil war is brewing. To unify the divided people, Conner, a nobleman of the court, devises a cunning plan to find an impersonator of the king's long-lost son and install him as a puppet prince. Four orphans are recruited to compete for the role, including a defiant boy named Sage. Sage knows that Conner's motives are more than questionable, yet his life balances on a sword's point—he must be chosen to play the prince or he will certainly be killed. But Sage's rivals have their own agendas as well.

As Sage moves from a rundown orphanage to Conner's sumptuous palace, layer upon layer of treachery and deceit unfold, until finally, a truth is revealed that, in the end, may very well prove more dangerous than all of the lies taken together.

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A friend told me about his experiences reading books he knows nothing about beforehand – usually books that are gifts – and I thought this was such a cool idea, I asked him to pick out a book for me to try that way. (And kudos to him – it only took him three tries to find a book I’d never heard of/knew nothing about!)

That book was False Prince, and it very quickly became clear it was going to be a DNF.

I think this was very much a case of Wrong Reader Syndrome: False Prince isn’t objectively bad, it’s just packed full of tropes I’m indifferent to, written in a style I personally don’t like. It’s also YA, which I’ve been reading less and less of because I don’t enjoy how simplistic most YA feels to me these days. (I say most, not all. The best kind of YA is rich and complex and passionate and doesn’t talk down to its teenage readers – but I have a hard time finding YA SFF like that lately. Recs are welcome!)

Even without reading the blurb (part of the ‘knowing nothing beforehand’ challenge) the combination of title and early chapters meant I could see the Le Gasp reveal coming from miles away, and I just don’t have any interest in these kinds of con stories. The author came up with a good, solid reason for why the cast has only two weeks to pull this off, but that doesn’t change the fact that my suspension of disbelief simply doesn’t strech far enough to accept that you can turn a ragamuffin orphan into a believable prince in two weeks. I’m reminded of the late Jay Lake’s book Green, wherein the main character is trained for years to be a Proper Lady – because that’s how long that process would actually take.

The prose was very simple, with occasional jarring moments where a sentence was phrased very oddly, or a line was ‘out of tune’ with the surrounding passage. I continue to wish I knew the technical term for this, because it happens all the time: I’ve tried to research it, but no luck so far. It’s hard to look something up when you don’t know what it is, I guess.

TL;DR = a book meant for the younger end of YA, objectively perfectly fine but absolutely wrong for this particular reader.

World Running Down by Al Hess
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Trans MC, M/M
Published on: 14th February 2023
ISBN: B0B2Z9R77N
Goodreads

Valentine Weis is a salvager in the future wastelands of Utah. Wrestling with body dysphoria, he dreams of earning enough money to afford citizenship in Salt Lake City – a utopia where the testosterone and surgery he needs to transition is free, the food is plentiful, and folk are much less likely to be shot full of arrows by salt pirates. But earning that kind of money is a pipe dream, until he meets the exceptionally handsome Osric.

Once a powerful AI in Salt Lake City, Osric has been forced into an android body against his will and sent into the wasteland to offer Valentine a job on behalf of his new employer – an escort service seeking to retrieve their stolen androids. The reward is a visa into the city, and a chance at the life Valentine’s always dreamed of. But as they attempt to recover the “merchandise”, they encounter a problem: the android ladies are becoming self-aware, and have no interest in returning to their old lives.

The prize is tempting, but carrying out the job would go against everything Valentine stands for, and would threaten the fragile found family that’s kept him alive so far. He’ll need to decide whether to risk his own dream in order to give the AI a chance to live theirs.

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

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I quit World Running Down at 41% – much later than the 20% that is my usual deciding point (ie, if I don’t care how a book will end by the time we hit 20%, I Do Not Finish it) – because I kept hoping it was going to get better.

It didn’t.

A fair bit of my critique is actually aimed at the publisher: the blurb/synopsis of World Running Down gives far too much away, undercutting the book’s attempts to surprise. The narrative frames the nature of the ‘merchandise’ the main characters are hired to retrieve as a Big Reveal…but we already know the merchandise = androids, because it says so right on the back of the book. That’s not Hess’ fault: that is squarely on whichever idiot wrote the blurb. I feel pretty sorry for Hess, having his story spoilered like that on the freaking back cover. It definitely doesn’t help with the reading experience.

That doesn’t make me inclined to go any easier on World Running Down, though: the fact is that the writing is extremely basic, the prose plain and blunt and direct. It’s easy to read, but it’s also kind of mind-numbing, simplistic to the point of being urgh. The story itself is also, in my opinion, far too straightforward and eye-rollingly predictable: of course the city is disgustingly rich and decadent; of course the Al begins to appreciate being humanoid and also catch Sexy Feelings for the only person who treats him like a person; of course the villains are cartoonishly evil and awful. Minor spoiler: [View post to see spoiler] The instalove is actually pretty believable under the circumstances – Valentine and Osric have a lot to commiserate about and bond over, and they’re each the first person to ever really ‘get’ the other – but that doesn’t mean it’s not also boring.

There’s definitely ‘an attempt was made’ vibes: bits and pieces of almost interesting ideas are scattered about, like the comparisons drawn (very, very unsubtly) between Valentine’s body dysphoria and Osric’s distress at having a body at all; or the glimpses we get of Al culture and the societal dynamics of AI/human interaction. But none of it was enough to get me to the halfway mark, never mind the ending.

I truly think World Running Down needed to be a lot longer: the fact that Valentine and Ace receive their marching orders at 40% of the way through the book means – thanks so that too-revealing blurb – that the reader already knows almost the entire first half of the story before ever opening the first page. And that’s simply ridiculous. Either finding-out-the-job needed to be a much smaller part of the book – not by cutting anything that comes before it, but by adding a lot more after it – or the synopsis desperately needs rewriting.

Or, you know. Both. Both would be my vote.

This next part is not intended as objective critique, but is just my personal preference: I’m tired of queer suffering. I’m agender; trust me, I get how much it fucking sucks to be misgendered, and have people thinking or insisting that you’re a woman when you’re fucking not. But equally? I don’t want to read about it. And some of that is on me: the synopsis of World Running Down is very clear about how Valentine is Not Having A Good Time, and I went ahead and (tried to) read it anyway. But some of it is also on the marketing (so, again, not the fault of the author) which has been pushing this book as cozy feel-good queer scifi. It’s really not. It’s not Trauma Porn – Hess is very clear on the distinction and good at staying on the right side of that line – but you should definitely be braced for trans misery, transphobia ranging from big and blunt to micro-aggressions, and lots of fun dehumanisation (though that’s reserved for the Al and android characters).

Overall? I don’t think World Running Down is a bad book. But it’s so simple, so obvious, so basic. There’s nothing to sink your teeth into. The things it has to say are not new, the interesting ideas/topics within are touched on only superficially, and the plot is too predictable to hold the attention. So, it’s not bad? But it’s not especially great either.

The Magician’s Daughter by H.G. Parry
Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy
Published on: 21st February 2023
ISBN: B0B38SS6P1
Goodreads

It is 1912, and for the last seventy years magic has all but disappeared from the world. Yet magic is all Biddy has ever known.

Orphaned in a shipwreck as a baby, Biddy grew up on Hy-Brasil, a legendary island off the coast of Ireland hidden by magic and glimpsed by rare travelers who return with stories of wild black rabbits and a lone magician in a castle. To Biddy, the island is her home, a place of ancient trees and sea-salt air and mysteries, and the magician, Rowan, is her guardian. She loves both, but as her seventeenth birthday approaches, she is stifled by her solitude and frustrated by Rowan’s refusal to let her leave. He himself leaves almost every night, transforming into a raven and flying to the mainland, and never tells her where or why he goes.

One night, Rowan fails to come home from his mysterious travels. When Biddy ventures into his nightmares to rescue him, she learns not only where he goes every night, but the terrible things that happened in the last days of magic that caused Rowan to flee to Hy-Brasil. Rowan has powerful enemies who threaten the safety of the island. Biddy’s determination to protect her home and her guardian takes her away from the safety of Hy-Brasil, to the poorhouses of Whitechapel, a secret castle beneath London streets, the ruins of an ancient civilization, and finally to a desperate chance to restore lost magic. But the closer she comes to answers, the more she comes to question everything she has ever believed about Rowan, her origins, and the cost of bringing magic back into the world.

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

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I went even further with Magician’s Daughter then I did World Burning Down – 50%. I pushed myself to the halfway point of the book, but I just couldn’t find the spoons to keep on with it after that.

First, the good: Parry subverts expectations all over the place with this one, so that every time I thought I knew what was about to happen – because This Particular Thing (whatever the Thing in question was) always happens This Particular Way – I was pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong! Points for that: I love it when I can’t predict what’s around the next plot-twist!

But to be honest, Magician’s Daughter feels like it doesn’t know what it’s trying to be, whether it wants to be whimsical or grim (not in a grimdark way, more in a ‘London in this time-period was not a great place to be’ kinda way). We have the delightful black bunnies of a magical hidden isle on one hand, and a bitter, sadistic human/raven hybrid on the other – and the two moods/aesthetics don’t mesh very well. The dissonance comes out in the narrative, which works very hard to make magic seem magical and the monsters seem monstrous, and doesn’t really do a great job at either.

What even is Magician’s Daughter? An adventure? A coming-of-age story? A quest to save the world? It tries to do it all, and thereby weakens each aspect of the story, rather than picking one and doing it well.

I’m not a fan of reveals that come out of nowhere – I much prefer it when an author drops clues along the way, so that when we get to a capital-r Reveal, I can see, in hindsight, how the groundwork was laid for it. The halfway point of this book is full of answers to important questions – but none of the answers were things we could have worked out from the information we had. There were no clues, so it almost comes across as info-dumping (especially since quite a lot of it takes place in a single conversation). I appreciated that The Truth was not what I expected it to be; that Parry takes our expectations of how this is all going to go (because we’re so used to This Kind of Thing always going This Way, like I said before) and deliberately does Something Else instead. But I didn’t like the way we found out about it all, and the Something Else itself wasn’t very interesting to me; it was a relatively minor change to the status quo, not a game-changing one.

I just didn’t find anything appealing about Magician’s Daughter. Biddy isn’t an especially interesting character; Rowan ought to be, but rapidly becomes unlikeable; the prose didn’t do justice to either the awfulness or the wonder. I never felt anything for this story; none of it made me anxious, or curious, or delighted; I was never on the edge of my seat; I never felt enchanted. And even after we started getting answers and revelations and secrets were all being uncovered, I just didn’t care. There’s absolutely nothing that makes me want to find out how it all ends.

So I’m not going to.

The First Bright Thing by J.R. Dawson
Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MC, F/F, secondary PoC characters
Published on: 13th June 2023
ISBN: 1250805570
Goodreads

If you knew how dark tomorrow would be, what would you do with today?

"This is the magic circus book that I have been looking for all my life."―Seanan McGuire, New York Times bestselling author of Every Heart A Doorway

Ringmaster — Rin, to those who know her best — can jump to different moments in time as easily as her wife, Odette, soars from bar to bar on the trapeze. And the circus they lead is a rare home and safe haven for magical misfits and outcasts, known as Sparks.

With the world still reeling from World War I, Rin and her troupe — the Circus of the Fantasticals — travel the midwest, offering a single night of enchantment and respite to all who step into their Big Top.

But threats come at Rin from all sides. The future holds an impending war that the Sparks can see barrelling toward their show and everyone in it. And Rin's past creeps closer every day, a malevolent shadow she can’t fully escape.

It takes the form of another circus, with tents as black as midnight and a ringmaster who rules over his troupe with a dangerous power. Rin's circus has something he wants, and he won't stop until it's his.

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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Of all the books I DNFed this month, The First Bright Thing was definitely the one I was most excited for. And I think a lot of people are going to love it! For very good reasons! But for me, it just didn’t click.

Alarm bells started ringing with the very first line of the book;

The Spark Circus always arrived when no one was looking, early in the morning.

It’s hard to believe that that’s not an intentional reference to/echo of The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, since the first line of that is

The circus arrives without warning.

That’s a pretty well-known line – I’ve seen it on prints, enamel pins, clothing, cups, journals, everything. It’s difficult for me to imagine a fantasy author – especially a fantasy author writing about a magical circus! – is unaware of The Night Circus. That book was a global phenomenon even outside the SFF community. So the first line of The First Bright Thing doesn’t feel like an accident.

I’m not accusing Dawson of plagiarism – that would be nonsensical, that’s clearly not what this is. It could be a respectful/happy homage to The Night Circus; it could simply be a nod of recognition to a book that did the Magic Circus trope before The First Bright Thing (but then, so did dozens if not hundreds or thousands of other books???); it could be a way of saying ‘yes, I’m walking in Erin Morgenstern’s footsteps’ (but then, again, also the footsteps of many, many other storytellers, so???) It might be that someone along the line suggested to Dawson that crafting a first line that echoed that of The Night Circus might help draw in fans of that book, might be a good idea.

I don’t think it was. I think it was a really, really bad idea. Why would you want readers immediately comparing The First Bright Thing to The Night Circus (any more than they already will, I mean, because Magic Circus)? It’s generally agreed that The Night Circus is an especially beautiful book, both in terms of prose style and imagery, and the nostalgia factor has gilded the memory of a book most fans probably haven’t reread in a while. That’s not something you want people measuring your book up against!

And besides, The First Bright Thing is different to The Night Circus in…almost every single way? They both feature magic circuses. That’s it. So if your goal is to draw in Morgenstern’s fans and make them hopeful that they’re going to get another book like The Night Circus…they’re not going to? And they will be disappointed? And more likely to judge The First Bright Thing negatively, because they’re (unconsciously, I’m pretty sure) now viewing it as a poor imitation of one of their favourite books, rather than judging it on its own merits???

Am I overthinking this? Quite possibly.

For me, that first line struck a sour note, both because I find it uncomfortable for a book to echo another book this way (I’m sure it’s not meant to be, but I can’t help but feel that it’s somehow rude?) and because the phrasing is kind of clunky (especially in comparison to the neat, simple elegance of ‘The circus arrives without warning.’)

The phrasing – writing – turned out to be my big issue with The First Bright Thing, the reason I quit before finishing it. It’s not that Dawson is a bad writer, but I would have sent this manuscript back for another round of polishing, because quite lovely lines are juxtaposed with very awkward ones that break the writing rhythm. The former make it clear that Dawson has the ability to be great; the latter just…grated.

Take this paragraph, which comes near the end of the first chapter;

Some circuses didn’t allow audience members on the main floor after the show, but Rin liked to watch the crowd poke at the props and set pieces, trying to spot any tricks up the circus’s sleeves. It was part of the nightly ritual; to watch from the wings as the audience spilled onto the floor like the end of a baseball game, intoxicated and invigorated by what they’d just witnessed. Real magic was a strong drink to take in.

Bolding is mine.

See, I think most of that paragraph is great! The baseball game imagery works! I get what it means! …And then there’s that line at the end. ‘Real magic was a strong drink to take in.’ I think I understand what Dawson is trying to say, but it’s just phrased very clumsily, and I don’t think it mixes well with the baseball game imagery. It’s also unnecessary to getting the point of the paragraph across. I would have cut it, personally.

There are a lot of lines like that, lines that are clunky, and sometimes outright confusing or unclear. Usually, said lines are trying to express something very meaningful and poignant – and there are a good number of times when Dawson gets it right, and those moments pack punch! But it’s jarring when it goes wrong, and it goes wrong a lot, and it’s like listening to someone playing music when they keep hitting the wrong notes – I keep twitching, and I absolutely cannot relax and enjoy myself, regardless of how many boxes the book’s premise and description tick for me.

No war, no Circus King would touch this. She could do this. She could protect them all. When Odette had met her, years ago, Rin had been nothing but hard armor. She’d tried so hard to let it go, to let them all into her heart, to believe no shadows would follow her. The world had carried on, and now, in 1926, people knew the future would be bright. It had to be. Nothing could be as bad as what had come before.

This reads like it should be three separate paragraphs; we have a) Rin’s desire to protect, b) Rin’s difficulty letting people in – and then it jumps to c) the world having carried on. It jumps from topic to topic in a way that doesn’t work for me; it feels jerky and random, not smoothly flowing the way it ought to.

A few more examples, lines or images that didn’t make sense or didn’t work for me;

“I can hold the weight I need to hold,” Rin said solidly. Like she’d formed cement bricks along her bones, burying whatever was beneath and fortifying her to move forward.

Bricks along her bones?

a man called Ford, who could change his voice to sound however he’d like.

the way the backstage crew worked like something between a ballet dance and a clock.

You can see what is trying to be said here! It’s so close! The phrasing just needs tweaking.

“Tonight!” she sounded. “Tonight you will see things you never thought you would live to see! You will realize that in this world, there are dreams that are only just out of reach.”

That…is not the optimistic speech you think it is? What??? Why would you tell them about dreams that are out of reach? And ‘tonight you will see things you never thought you would live to see’…that would make sense if you were time-travelling from the future, I guess? Otherwise, I don’t understand???

“This circus is a way to hide?” Jo said.

“No,” the Ringmaster said, calmly. “No, we do much good here. Empires have always underestimated artists. And it works in our favor. It makes us powerful. No one expects us to change the world, and so we do.

Amazing mission statement, but not at all an answer to the question? Is this a way to hide? No, we do much good here. Those two points aren’t related to each other. I think I see what the Ringmaster is trying to say, but it’s frustrating.

He was one of many calcified children who had to grow up too fast. And Jo was one of many invisible girls trying to disappear into the cracks of the world.

…I think I get what you’re trying to say here, but calcified anything can’t grow, and invisible people don’t need to disappear? Because they’re already invisible? What???

But then we get lines like this, which are simply *chef’s kiss*

It made this downtown an industrial otherworld; one foot in progress and the other in prairie.

I LOVE that! That is an amazing line! You immediately get what it’s saying, the image is fantastic, and I am an ardent fan of alliteration. Perfect!

It was now time to add the pathos to the logos and ethos.

Genius!

This girl was sitting on a precipice and she could fall or she could fly. Maybe Rin could build her a bridge…

Brilliant!

So while I was majorly frustrated by the clunky lines, there is a lot here for readers to like – and I know I’m incredibly picky when it comes to writing style, which is why I included so many examples; if the lines that make me twitch don’t bother you? Then you can, obviously, ignore that whole part of my critique.

I did have a few more problems with this book, though. Very quickly, we learn that the purpose of the circus – this particular circus, I mean – is to find people who ‘need something in their life’ and customise each night’s performance for that one visitor they foresee attending. And those visitors then walk away with hope or courage or resolve or whatever it is they needed.

I just…immediately didn’t buy that. Because I don’t see how even the most incredible circus could do that. A thing of beauty, including all kinds of performance art, can absolutely inspire, and fill people with powerful emotion. But the idea that every night, this circus changes someone’s life? What kind of performances are you giving? What are you doing? I mean in practical, literal terms, what are you doing? How do you change/edit/customise the acts so that this night, you will fill someone with courage they’ll carry with them forever, and the next night, hope? What do the clowns do differently on a courage night, as opposed to a hope night?

(In fairness, maybe there would have been more detail on this further on in the book – I stopped a third of the way through. But given how this entire explanation of their mission is info-dumped on the reader, I’m not betting on it.)

So the premise of the circus itself immediately didn’t make sense to me – I couldn’t suspend my disbelief enough, I guess – but there are also bits of the worldbuilding that made me frown, like the law that says Sparks and not-Sparks will just…leave each other the fuck alone. The government will happily use people with magical powers in war, and civilians will hand over their Spark kids or spouses to sanitoriums that allegedly try to cure them, but – look, I am extremely Tired of the idea that the government would want mutants/magic users/Sparks registered and tracked or whatever, but I find it impossible to believe that the government – the American government specifically – would decide that the best course was agreeing to mutual non-interference. Not kicking them out of the country, not conscripting them, not requiring them to be registered, not trying to kill them, just a ‘you do your thing and we will do yours and neither side will start trouble with the other’. Especially when we see how many non-Sparks really, properly hate and fear Sparks.

I don’t buy it. And – what does that even mean? Are Sparks still citizens? Can they vote? Is there a separate legal system for them, are there Spark police who investigate crimes involving Sparks? Can Sparks enter into contracts with non-Sparks? I did not get answers to any of this in the first third of the book, and I got the vibe I wasn’t going to get any if I pushed through, either. (But who knows? I could be wrong about that.)

Finally, the descriptions of the actual circus acts – which should really be dripping in gorgeous descriptive prose – are very inconsistent, swinging between dull and mechanical

Odette spun around right ways up, then did a figure-eight foot lock with a fan kick, arabesque, fan kick, arabesque, hold as she spun. Then Odette did a Russian climb and somehow even made that look both graceful and difficult.

and something that comes close to what I wanted out of these scenes.

She walked across a tightrope, grabbed one of her lyras, and balanced with the power of an athlete and the poise of a princess, her thighs and feet and fingers slowly turning and contorting around the circle high in the sky.

That second paragraph – which comes right after the first! – is wonderful; it’s emotive, now I know what I’m supposed to be feeling, and I have something to picture. The vibe of wonder, which is absolutely necessary for a magic circus, is there! But the first paragraph? I don’t know what those terms mean, and even if I did, it’s such a dry way of describing what Odette is doing here. This beautiful, presumably very impressive thing is boring because the prose isn’t up to the task of conveying it.

Eventually, I just couldn’t take the see-sawing between bad lines and good any more. I got very tired of all the telling, and while I liked the characters individually, I didn’t believe in their established relationships with each other. The book makes major use of a kind of magic/supernatural ability I particularly dislike – the whole story hinges on it, really – the dialogue felt scripted, and poorly scripted at that…

Nope. This one just isn’t for me. Alas.

Will you be reading any of these? Have you read them and felt differently about them? Let me know!

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

Must-Have Monday #122

I have scoured all my usual sources and come up with FOUR books of interest this week!

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

Modern Divination (Modern Divination, #1) by Isabel Agajanian
Genres: Fantasy
Published on: 30th January 2023
Goodreads

Aurelia Schwartz has spent twenty-three years maintaining the equilibrium between her carefully curated human life and the magical one that she endures in secret. With a devoted best friend and top marks at a prestigious university, she has everything one could possibly want neatly within her grasp.

Except, her gift of green magic has begun to fade, and if that wasn’t enough to upset the balance of her life, a fateful run-in with another power-hungry witch with a penchant for stolen magic has threatened to bring it all to ruin.

Cast into an unexpected alliance with her dreadfully arrogant classmate, Aurelia goes into hiding among a peculiar family of witches, where she discovers that the secret to their safety requires breaking rules she has followed all her life:
Make no promises,
Tell no one what you are,
and Never stay the night.

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This was released as an ebook yesterday, and the paper edition is out today! I’ve heard really good things about this one, and I’m intrigued by the whole Corpse Bride aesthetic of the cover, so I’ll be checking it out for sure.

The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
Genres: Sci Fi
Published on: 31st January 2023
Goodreads

The Terraformers is an equally heart-warming and thought-provoking vision of the future for fans of Becky Chambers, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Martha Wells.

Destry is a top network analyst with the Environmental Rescue Team, an ancient organization devoted to preventing ecosystem collapse. On the planet Sask-E, her mission is to terraform an Earthlike world, with the help of her taciturn moose, Whistle.
But then she discovers a city that isn't supposed to exist, hidden inside a massive volcano. Torn between loyalty to the ERT and the truth of the planet's history, Destry makes a decision that echoes down the generations.

Centuries later, Destry's protege, Misha, is building a planetwide transit system when his worldview is turned upside-down by Sulfur, a brilliant engineer from the volcano city. Together, they uncover a dark secret about the real estate company that's buying up huge swaths of the planet―a secret that could destroy the lives of everyone who isn't Homo sapiens. Working with a team of robots, naked mole rats, and a very angry cyborg cow, they quietly sow seeds of subversion. But when they're threatened with violent diaspora, Misha and Sulfur's very unusual child faces a stark choice: deploy a planet-altering weapon, or watch their people lose everything they've built on Sask-E.

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After the incredible The Future of Another Timeline, I am more than eager to pounce on anything Newitz writes, and although The Terraformers didn’t sound super interesting to me at first, the sneak peek hooked me immediately. I can’t wait to read the full thing!

Vampire Weekend by Mike Chen
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy
Published on: 31st January 2023
Goodreads

Being a vampire is far from glamorous...but it can be pretty punk rock

Everything you've heard about vampires is a lie. They can't fly. No murders allowed (the community hates that). And turning into a bat? Completely ridiculous. In fact, vampire life is really just a lot of blood bags and night jobs. For Louise Chao, it's also lonely, since she swore off family ages ago.

At least she's gone to decades of punk rock shows. And if she can join a band of her own (while keeping her...situation under wraps), maybe she'll finally feel like she belongs, too.

Then a long-lost teenage relative shows up at her door. Whether it's Ian's love of music or his bad attitude, for the first time in ages, Louise feels a connection.

But as Ian uncovers Louise's true identity, things get dangerous--especially when he asks her for the ultimate favor. One that goes beyond just family...one that might just change everything vampires know about life and death forever.

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I am firmly of the opinion that immortals ought to be utilising immortality to embrace their loves and hobbies, and even though Louise does not seem to be enjoying her immortality, I like the punk rock angle the blurb is selling us on. I really hope she gets to join her own band, and want to see how that goes!

(And is that a corgi in the background of the cover? I hope it is!)

Where the Black Flowers Bloom by Ronald L. Smith
Genres: Fantasy
Representation: Black MC
Published on: 31st January 2023
Goodreads

A gripping, richly imagined African-inspired fantasy in which a Black girl finds her power and saves her people from evil, by the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award-winning author of Black Panther: The Young Prince. 

In the land of Alkebulan, twelve-year-old Asha is an orphan, raised by Madame S, the proprietor of a traveling carnival. When Madame S is attacked by ghoulish creatures, she manages to tell Asha before she dies, “Seek the Underground Kingdom, where the black flowers bloom.” Asha doesn’t understand the mysterious words, but they launch her onto a page-turning quest to protect her people and stop an ancient evil. Along the way, she uncovers shocking secrets about the family she never knew and begins to find her place in the world as she discovers her own untapped powers.

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Carnivals, underground kingdoms, and foxes??? Definitely grabbing a copy for one of my younger sisters, this sounds right up her alley!

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

The post Must-Have Monday #122 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Witches Failing At Witchery: VenCo by Cherie Dimaline

VenCo by Cherie Dimaline
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Métis MC, sapphic MC, F/F, secondary trans character, bi/pansexual antagonist
Published on: 7th February 2023
ISBN: 0063054914
Goodreads

“Crackling with magic, mystery, adventure, and intrigue, VenCo is a captivating tribute to the bonds of families we are born into and the ones that we create, and a delightful testament to the power of all womankind.”— Nikki Erlick, New York Times bestselling author of The Measure

For fans of The Once and Future Witches and Practical Magic, comes an incredibly imaginative, highly anticipated new novel featuring witches, magic, and a road trip across America—from Cherie Dimaline, the critically acclaimed author of Empire of Wild.

Lucky St. James, a Métis millennial living with her cantankerous but loving grandmother Stella, is barely hanging on when she discovers she will be evicted from their tiny Toronto apartment. Then, one night, something strange and irresistible calls out to Lucky. Burrowing through a wall, she finds a silver spoon etched with a crooked-nosed witch and the word SALEM, humming with otherworldly energy.

Hundreds of miles away in Salem, Myrna Good has been looking for Lucky. Myrna works for VenCo, a front company fueled by vast resources of dark money.

Lucky is familiar with the magic of her indigenous ancestors, but she has no idea that the spoon links her to VenCo’s network of witches throughout North America. Generations of witches have been waiting for centuries for the seven spoons to come together, igniting a new era, and restoring women to their rightful power.

But as reckoning approaches, a very powerful adversary is stalking their every move. He’s Jay Christos, a roguish and deadly witch-hunter as old as witchcraft itself.

To find the last spoon, Lucky and Stella embark on a rollicking and dangerous road trip to the darkly magical city of New Orleans, where the final showdown will determine whether VenCo will usher in a new beginning…or remain underground forever.

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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~seven prophesised (sorta) spoons
~granddaughter/grandma relationships FTW
~bondage gear saves the day
~useless oracles are useless
~don’t sneeze!

This had all the set-up to be an absolutely incredible book, and for the first little while, that’s exactly what VenCo looked like. Unfortunately, by the halfway mark it was pretty clear VenCo wasn’t going to live up to its potential, and while the book’s final pages were gorgeous, the actual ending of the story was seriously disappointing.

The prologue introduces us to the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone, three women who together make up the Oracle that runs a mysterious corporation called Venco. I absolutely adored this prologue, these three very different, powerful magical women introduced to us with some really lovely prose and the delicious promise of Serious Plot about to unfold.

But those three end up being incredibly minor characters, who, despite being at the top (or perhaps heart) of the American witch community, mostly just wring their hands and ‘can’t intervene’ for reasons that are never properly explained, despite them being the only ones with the full picture of what’s going down. I despise this nonsense trope of supposedly-powerful governing bodies having to be hands-off the plot Because Reasons, so as I gradually realised that was exactly what we had here, I became more and more annoyed with it.

“We keep the network engaged, place our women in the right positions, tend to the coffers, but we do not step in. We are not coven witches and don’t have that power.”

The spotlight of this book is on Lucky, a young Métis woman living with her elderly grandmother, who in turn is beginning to suffer from bouts of memory loss and confusion. Lucky is instantly hugely sympathetic, a Millennial with a fairly unconventional childhood who’s just trying to do her best by herself and her grandmother; a little bit snarky, possessed of a huge heart, a writer who doesn’t know what to write (oh, babs, we’ve all been there <3), who tries to dream big but feels crushed down by the world and the system. Let no one say Dimaline has not crafted the perfect MC for this story; I defy anyone who picks this book up not to adore Lucky immensely!

“I am the daughter of Arnya St. James, defender of women, drinker of gin, fighter of assholes, a fierce half-breed from a long line of fierce half-breeds who took no shit and gave no fucks. I am a witch and I am here.”

But although Lucky shines, and Dimaline’s prose and imagery is enchanting, the story itself starts to fall apart quickly. After finding the sixth sort-of-prophesised spoon, it’s Lucky’s job to first meet her now-coven – the owners/guardians of spoons one-through-five – and then track down the seventh spoon and the witch it belongs to. When all seven spoons are united, it’s supposed to be the start of a major change to or remaking of the world; there’s a heavy implication that this will involve hexing the fuck out of the patriarchy. And I was so on board for this!

That’s not what we got, though. Because these witches are…really kind of useless? For a book that talked about the power of women, people of colour, and queer people, it really didn’t walk the walk. There’s a little bit of dream-walking, but the majority of the coven spends the majority of the book staring into a bowl of water trying – and failing – to get a vision of something useful. Apart from a brief break to get hammered – which is somehow the only way to acquire the info Lucky needs to get started on her quest – holders of spoons one-through-five spend the ENTIRE BOOK huddled together in a single house out of fear of one (1) bad guy, who they are apparently completely unable to defend themselves against – and forget going on the offensive, because that’s just not going to happen.

These are supposedly the world-defining witches of the age??? The ones who will shape history and usher in a glorious new utopian era??? How???

And to be honest, the whole girl-power! BIPOC-power! Queer-power! messaging reads as incredibly muddled and messy. Not in a ‘real people are messy’ way, but like Dimaline couldn’t quite figure out what that kind of power means in practical terms, what claiming or reclaiming it and sharing it looks like. It ended up feeling very hand-waved, and to be honest a whole lot of the narrative seemed to contradict and actively undermine it.

(Like the fact that this entire underground society of witches and their support staff can’t handle one single man…)

As a nonbinary person, I’m always a little wary when someone starts preaching girl-power, because too much of the time it gets conflated with XX chromosomes and biology. So I was relieved when Dimaline included a trans woman amongst the spoon holders – I thought we’d dodged that bullet! But again, it’s messy, and kind of undermined by the repeated emphasis on biological motherhood.

“Ironic, that, since the only way to truly be immortal is to have descendants.

I started writing up a whole separate thesis tearing apart VenCo’s philosophy re women vs men, but you know what? I’m just too Tired. It rubbed me the wrong way and seemed uncomfortably simplistic; let’s leave it at that. (Although I do want to be clear that this isn’t a man-hating book, and we meet several perfectly lovely guys throughout the narrative. But the witches’ actual philosophy seems to be ‘girls only, men are the problem’, and while I’m very happy this book says trans women are real women, there’s a lot of us who aren’t women, and a lot of men who aren’t cishet white men, and in the real world this stuff is really complicated, okay? And VenCo is acting like it isn’t. Which I do not love.)

I do want to take a sec to talk about the spoons themselves, though. I thought the idea of seven prophesised spoons was just the right mix of whimsical and magical – it was a big part of why I picked up VenCo in the first place! But I was really unhappy with the backstory of the spoons, and the obsession with Salem, Massachusetts. We discover that the spoons were created by a misogynistic Puritan man in Salem, part of a series of decorative spoons that were intended to ‘keep women in their place’, to remind them not to go near magic. And they did this by…being engraved with witches riding brooms? Sorry, I don’t get how that’s supposed to work? At all??? You buy one of these as a souvenir of your trip to Salem, presumably hang it in your kitchen after, and…your wife doesn’t get uppity? What? It’s a spoon, dude. It’s really not an inherently intimidating object, and it definitely doesn’t scream ONLY MEN CAN HAVE POWER. It’s not like an ancient Roman tintinnabulum or something!

(Link NSFW. Penis windchimes. Tintinnabulums were penis windchimes. Romans were weird.)

I’m not sure if this is an objectively a poor writing choice or just an instance of my personal taste not matching up with the author’s; I wanted the spoons to be…well, Not This. Pretty? Witchy? Silly? I thought it would be a slightly tongue-in-cheek thing, that the characters would acknowledge that this is an extremely odd way of finding chosen ones but what’re you gonna do??? And we didn’t get that. Just a lot of emphasis on and reminders of, over and over, the ugly-hag imagery etched into the spoons, without any real explanation of how that imagery was meaningful.

(Plus there’s the whole thing re the spoons coming from Salem. Where the present-day coven also resides, and like. Can we not? Can we drop the obsession with Salem? I’m so sick and tired of people dropping the witches in their stories in Salem. It’s just boring and lazy at this point.)

If I’m being generous, I can guardedly admit that it might be intended as a reclaiming of the witch-riding-a-broom imagery, a subversion of an attempt to strip women of power (but…with spoons??? HOW DO SPOONS INTIMIDATE ANYONE?), taking these objects that were supposed to keep women down (…somehow) and turn them into objects of power instead. But a) they’re not objects of power, we really just have to trust the text that these spoons are special, because we definitely never see it for ourselves, and b) there were so many other ways you could have played with this! Why not use or invent some analogue of Welsh love spoons, which have their own language of symbols – then you could have done all sorts of things with the symbols in each spoon? Why not have a mismatched set of spoons, where each one once belonged to a woman executed for witchcraft? That way they become a bridge between the past and the present, connecting the witches of today to the witches of yesteryear; the metaphor of passing the torch, except the torch is a spoon? With that you could have leaned into how the spoon is traditionally a very feminine thing, especially if we’re talking about cooking and mixing spoons women would have used in the kitchen, you know? THAT would have felt like a reclaiming, a subversion of these traditionally womanly objects. Any of that would have been more interesting and fun than what Dimaline actually did, and I came up with those ideas in less than ten minutes.

Instead, Salem and very weird misogyny. Lame.

I did appreciate that Dimaline included several different real-life magical traditions in the book, and nods to more, but it’s bizarre to me how little magic we actually see, and there’s no discussions or explanations of how it works or what it’s capable of. Later, we’re told that being a witch is actually something you either are or you aren’t – you can’t learn it, and the children of witches who do not themselves inherit whatever it is that makes you a witch become witch-adjacent support staff instead, and hi, I absolutely hate this worldbuilding.

“Do you know what happens when a witch has children who don’t inherit her power?”

…

“They become Watchers, like me,” the Mother continued, pointing to herself. Then she indicated the Crone. “Or Bookers.” Then, finally, the Maiden. “Or Tenders,

It’s also extremely confusing; the idea that being a witch is tied to your genes, or something, is…what??? Magic is genetic??? Doesn’t that completely contradict the idea that magic belongs to the Othered, that to be Othered (aka, femme, not-white, and/or queer) is to be inherently magical? Which seems to be what parts of the book are trying to say?

And, uh. For a supposedly massively powerful, magical organisation, Venco the corporation might as well not exist for all the relevance it has to the story here. There is a kind of underground community that helps support witches, but we don’t see Venco employees or operatives pulling strings and making things happen for our characters, not even in purely mundane ways like covering the price of gas and plane tickets for Lucky. Why on earth is the book named for this company???

Maybe it’s not – since ‘venco’ is an amalgam of ‘coven’, maybe the title is supposed to refer to The Coven – aka, Lucky’s coven – coming together. Except that, as previously stated, the coven is pretty useless and unimpressive, so???

Argh.

The Oracle do try to push or direct magical power at the coven at one point, but it’s all very useless and handwavey, and look, I do not need (or want) a magic system that is all laid out like a Maths equation, I love magic that is mysterious and wondrous and, well, magical. But it’s not, here. There’s no sense of wonder connected to the magic of this story; there are no moments that sent happy chills down my spine or gave me electric goosebumps. The magic is…vague, and diffuse, and barely present. Not in a dreamlike way, but in an I can’t commit to what the magic in my story can do so I’m going to use it as little as possible way. It was so frustrating, especially in a book that claimed it was all about women and minorities discovering, reclaiming and wielding magical power!

Because it isn’t. It really isn’t. If it was, we would see the other witches take a more active role. We would see the villain hindered by their spells and cleverness. We would see magic smoothing the way for Lucky, getting her out of difficult situations, allowing her to accomplish what couldn’t be accomplished otherwise. And there’s none of that.

Lucky herself? Wonderful. Stella, her grandmother? Epic. Their relationship? *chef’s kiss*

“Kids look good on you,” Stella baited Lucky as she followed along.

“And sanity looks good on you,” Lucky teased back, “but some things are just borrowed.”

I even loved the full cast of secondary characters, the holders of the other spoons, but it’s like Dimaline had no idea what to do with them, because, again, they just spend the whole book shoved into a house, cowering from the monster, doing almost nothing. None of them get to be anything but extremely passive.

(Why not have each of the witches come from/join/learn a different magical tradition, so they’re all working different kinds of witchcraft/magic? Why not have them using chaos magic, creating their own spells and sigils and rituals, reinventing magic the way they’re supposed to be reinventing the world? THERE WAS SO MUCH YOU COULD HAVE DONE HERE!)

And while I don’t want to go into spoilers, the showdown between Lucky and the bad guy is a trainwreck – don’t get me started on the bondage gear – and the reveal of the final spoon-holder? It was so obvious and cliche that I almost cried. Heartbreakingly disappointing, straight into cliche.

The prose itself is gorgeous, and I will definitely be looking at Dimaline’s other books, both those she’s previously published and any she publishes in the future, simply because of how beautiful her writing is. But if what you want is a modern, intersectional witchy+femme manifesto-story, then I point you instead towards The Women Could Fly, which is exquisitely excellent.

Because VenCo is not, and honestly, I’d recommend skipping it.

The post Witches Failing At Witchery: VenCo by Cherie Dimaline appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

I Can’t Wait For…Exadelic by Jon Evans

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 Exadelic by Jon Evans!

Exadelic by Jon Evans
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy
Published on: 5th September 2023
Goodreads

When an unconventional offshoot of the US military trains an artificial intelligence in the dark arts that humanity calls "black magic," it learns how to hack the fabric of reality itself. It can teleport matter. It can confer immunity to bullets. And it decides that obscure Silicon Valley middle manager Adrian Ross is the primary threat to its existence.

Soon Adrian is on the run, wanted by every authority, with no idea how or why he could be a threat. His predicament seems hopeless; his future, nonexistent. But when he investigates the AI and its creators, he discovers his problems are even stranger than they seem...and unearths revelations that will propel him on a journey -- and a love story -- across worlds, eras, and everything, everywhere, all at once.

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I have so many questions, and my first one is: who the FUCK thought it was a good idea to teach an AI black magic?! I feel like the hardest part of selling me on this story is going to be convincing me of the reasoning of whoever thought that was a good idea. I mean, I think it’s fair to say they were wrong about it being a good idea, but why did they think it was one???

That aside? I really love this premise! I want to know what Evans’ take on black magic looks like, and I want to know how an AI can use it, how technology/technological sapience interacts with magic. That’s just such a cool idea! And it seems like the blurb is hinting at the involvement of other worlds/dimensions? Perhaps a multiverse? I don’t know, but I REALLY want to find out!

Do I think this is going to blow me away? Not if it’s as thriller-y as it sounds, although I’m hopeful given that Jo Walton has said of it “This is what Neal Stephenson is supposed to be like.” (No shade to Stephenson, but I’ve bounced off all the stuff of his I’ve tried so far.)

It can’t be that thriller-y if a love story is a big part of it, right? Thrillers don’t go for romance, they go for sex, so I’m crossing my fingers. But honestly, even if it is a thriller, with a premise like that I’m still definitely going to read it.

AN AI WIELDING BLACK MAGIC: HI YES THAT IS ALL I NEED TO KNOW!

The post I Can’t Wait For…Exadelic by Jon Evans appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday #121

Only FOUR books this week, but they’re all ones I’m extremely excited for!!!

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

The Infinite (The Outside #3) by Ada Hoffmann
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi, Science Fantasy
Representation: Sapphic autistic MC, F/F, secondary nonbinary characters
Published on: 24th January 2023
Goodreads

Final instalment from Philip K Dick Award-nominated series from Ada Hoffmann

Time is running out for the planet Jai. The artificially intelligent Gods who rule the galaxy have withdrawn their protection from the chaos-ravaged world, just as their most ancient enemy closes in. For Yasira Shien, who has devoted herself to the fragile planet's nascent rebellion, it's time to do or die – and the odds are overwhelming.

Enter Dr. Evianna Talirr. Talirr, the visionary who decimated the planet and began its rebellion, is not a woman to be trusted. But she's returned with an unsettling prophecy: the only way to save Jai is for Yasira to die.

Yasira knows it can't be that simple. But as she frantically searches for other options, what she finds will upend everything she knew about the Gods, the galaxy she lives in, and herself.

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The Infinite is the final installment in Hoffman’s Outside trilogy, which I’ve adored from the first chapter of the first book! And I am DELIGHTED to be able to assure you that it is a gods-damn epic finale! (You can find links to reviews of books 1 and 2 at the link!)

The Buried and the Bound by Rochelle Hassan
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Lebanese-American MC, bi/pansexual MC, gay MC
Published on: 24th January 2023
ISBN: 1250822203
Goodreads

A contemporary fantasy YA debut from Rochelle Hassan about monsters, magic, and wicked fae, perfect for fans of The Darkest Part of the Forest and The Hazel Wood.

As the only hedgewitch in Blackthorn, Massachusetts—an uncommonly magical place—Aziza El-Amin has bargained with wood nymphs, rescued palm-sized fairies from house cats, banished flesh-eating shadows from the local park. But when a dark entity awakens in the forest outside of town, eroding the invisible boundary between the human world and fairyland, run-of-the-mill fae mischief turns into outright aggression, and the danger—to herself and others—becomes too great for her to handle alone.

Leo Merritt is no stranger to magical catastrophes. On his sixteenth birthday, a dormant curse kicked in and ripped away all his memories of his true love. A miserable year has passed since then. He's road-tripped up and down the East Coast looking for a way to get his memories back and hit one dead end after another. He doesn't even know his true love's name, but he feels the absence in his life, and it's haunting.

Desperate for answers, he makes a pact with Aziza: he’ll provide much-needed backup on her nightly patrols, and in exchange, she’ll help him break the curse.

When the creature in the woods sets its sights on them, their survival depends on the aid of a mysterious young necromancer they’re not certain they can trust. But they’ll have to work together to eradicate the new threat and take back their hometown... even if it forces them to uncover deeply buried secrets and make devastating sacrifices.

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I fell in love with Hassan’s prose and deceptively simple worldbuilding, to say nothing of a really wonderful cast! The Buried and the Bound really deserves a whole lot of love – I’m already pining for the sequel! – so I really hope lots of people pick this one up!

You can read my full review here!

Spice Road (Spice Road Trilogy, #1) by Maiya Ibrahim
Genres: Fantasy
Representation: Arabic-coded cast and setting
Published on: 24th January 2023
Goodreads

In the hidden desert city of Qalia, there is secret spice magic that awakens the affinities of those who drink the misra tea. Sixteen-year-old Imani has the affinity for iron and is able to wield a dagger like no other warrior. She has garnered the reputation as being the next great Shield for battling djinn, ghouls, and other monsters spreading across the sands.

Her reputation has been overshadowed, however, by her brother, who tarnished the family name after it was revealed that he was stealing his nation's coveted spice--a telltale sign of magical obsession. Soon after that, he disappeared, believed to have died beyond the Forbidden Wastes. Despite her brother's betrayal, there isn't a day that goes by when Imani doesn't grieve him.

But when Imani discovers signs that her brother may be alive and spreading the nation's magic to outsiders, she makes a deal with the Council that she will find him and bring him back to Qalia, where he will face punishment. Accompanied by other Shields, including Taha, a powerful beastseer who can control the minds of falcons, she sets out on her mission.

Imani will soon find that many secrets lie beyond the Forbidden Wastes--and in her own heart--but will she find her brother?

The first book in an epic fantasy series set in an Arabian-inspired land with secret spice magic. Raised to protect her nation from the monsters lurking in the sands, sixteen-year-old Imani must fight to find her brother, whose betrayal is now the country's greatest threat.

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I’m a sucker for food-related magic, and spice magic definitely qualifies! Plus, there’s been so much hype and love for Spice Road from early readers that I’m pretty excited to dive in myself!

Queer Fires (Flint and Tinder #2) by Gregory Ashe
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bisexual MC, gay MC, M/M
Published on: 27th January 2023
Goodreads

Emmett might not have a job. He might not be going to school. He might not have any friends. Heck, he might not even be all that happy. But he’s clean; that’s the important thing. And all that spare time? It means he can really focus on screwing up his friendship (and absolutely nothing more than friendship) with Jim, who just happens to be the most important person in his life.

When their friend Chloe shows up at their apartment, being chased by men with guns, Emmett and Jim find themselves dragged into a conflict they don’t understand. A year ago, they saved Chloe’s life from a band of supernatural killers. Now, it seems someone is after her again. It’s up to Emmett and Jim to stop them, which might be easier if they could figure out why everyone wants her.

It won’t be that easy, of course. When Chloe’s on-and-off-again girlfriend gets taken hostage, Emmett and Jim will have to race to save her. But an invisible war is raging all around them, and they’ve just stepped into the crossfire.

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YESSSSSSS, FINALLY! Queer Fires is the sequel to Ember Boys, which I adored – not least because this series, Flint and Tinder, is the follow-up/spin-off of the Hollow Folk books, and expands the worldbuilding as well as the story of one of my favourite characters!

If you’re unfamiliar with these books, you’re in for a TREAT; see here for my review on the Hollow Folk series, and here for my thoughts on Ember Boys! THEN JUMP IN AND JOIN ME IN ADORING THIS VERSE!

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

The post Must-Have Monday #121 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

An Infinitely Mindblowing Finale: The Infinite by Ada Hoffman

The Infinite (The Outside #3) by Ada Hoffmann
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi, Science Fantasy
Representation: Sapphic autistic MC, F/F, secondary nonbinary characters
PoV: Third-person, past-tense, multiple PoVs
Published on: 24th January 2023
ISBN: B09XM512MZ
Goodreads

Final instalment from Philip K Dick Award-nominated series from Ada Hoffmann

Time is running out for the planet Jai. The artificially intelligent Gods who rule the galaxy have withdrawn their protection from the chaos-ravaged world, just as their most ancient enemy closes in. For Yasira Shien, who has devoted herself to the fragile planet's nascent rebellion, it's time to do or die – and the odds are overwhelming.

Enter Dr. Evianna Talirr. Talirr, the visionary who decimated the planet and began its rebellion, is not a woman to be trusted. But she's returned with an unsettling prophecy: the only way to save Jai is for Yasira to die.

Yasira knows it can't be that simple. But as she frantically searches for other options, what she finds will upend everything she knew about the Gods, the galaxy she lives in, and herself.

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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~believe you deserve better
~the Keres is coming
~angels will fall
~Saviour’s gonna save
~if no one in the universe will help you, look outside the universe

*spoilers for The Outside and The Fallen, books one and two of the trilogy!*

My review of The Outside
My review of The Fallen

Hoffman’s debut trilogy has, since day one, anchored a far-future epic of AI gods and reality-breaking monsters in the human element, giving us a story leviathanic in scope but close and personal and intimate at the same time. It’s a big part of what gives these books so much punch; the fact that we can’t, even for one moment, forget how these big sweeping events affect people on an individual level – people who are so real and sympathetic that it’s instead very easy to forget that they’re fictional. This trilogy has never allowed us to forget that ‘the masses’ have names, that the bystanders have hopes and dreams and families, that the heroes on the front line have bad mental health days way more often than anyone would like.

There has never been the option to ‘zoom out’ on (and thus emotionally distance ourselves from) the conflict Yasira and her friends are caught up in; Hoffman’s given us glimpses of the Big Picture, but has always kept us grounded, focussed on the Little Picture, the human element. And that gives the big finale of this trilogy a unique flavour, more realistic than such conclusions tend to be. The adjectives that spring to mind all carry a negative connotation – mundane, banal, prosaic – and that’s not how I mean it!

Maybe it would be more accurate to say that, despite all the sci-fi and outright supernatural elements, this universe-changing climax feels grounded. Grounded in reality; The Infinite is not the breathtaking but bloodless kind of sweeping epic reminiscent of ancient poetry…but it is, instead, a great and fundamentally human resolution that I can believe in.

It’s not perfect: that ‘zooming in’ on the brainstorming, planning, and preparations for a battle the Chaos Zone probably won’t survive does make it all feel a little…ordinary? Not routine, exactly, but…well, 99% of any battle/war is the logistics of everything that needs to be arranged before anyone steps onto the battlefield; and the practical, realistic approach to those logistics was not something I found very gripping. It’s not that the characters aren’t terrified and scrambling and turning to allies and weaponry they couldn’t even have imagined a book ago – because they are; all of that is happening! But I think it must be incredibly difficult, if not outright impossible, to make that kind of step-by-step process into something thrilling.

Even when some of those steps involve testing and experimenting with monsters and magical powers, or reaching outside of the universe for help, or making common cause with people you never thought you’d ally with.

It’s the methodical way in which the cast go through their ideas, and the action-plans born from those ideas, that turned the dial down on all the anxiety, I think. This is something that definitely happens in real life – when you’re terrified, focussing on the practical things, on what to do next, is one way to calm down. And so here, in Infinite, it had that effect on me – calming me down when the narrative seemed to be doing its best to amp me up. Despite the highest of stakes, I just didn’t feel the urgency and fear and dread that I think I should have been feeling.

But I’m not convinced I was supposed to, especially since Hoffman deftly braids many other threads through this finale that most definitely are interesting. Akavi and Elu’s chapters were some of the best in The Fallen, and I massively appreciated their part in The Infinite – particularly now that the whole gang is back together, after kidnapping Enga at the end of The Fallen! Akavi’s lust for vengeance against Nemesis contrasts wonderfully with the desperate desire of Yasira and the Chaos Zone to just be left alone, and there are some jaw-dropping twists and reveals into the nature of the angels and the gods they serve.

Another plotline that snatched my attention was our glimpse into the past; for the first time, we’re shown the – the birth of the gods, I guess you could call it; woven through the main story is the arc of one of the scientists who was fundamental in designing, building, and perfecting Nemesis Herself. This is obviously taking place hundreds of years in Yasira’s past, but not very far away from our present, which was more than a little chilling. I never had any issues with the backstory of how the universe got the way it is at the start of this trilogy; I never had any trouble believing that AIs could absolutely end up worshipped as gods, and all of the worldbuilding has always fit beautifully together. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the hell out of getting more worldbuilding; tracing Nemesis’ rise was, honestly, horrifyingly hypnotic, the kind of thing you can’t tear your eyes away from.

Gods – hah – it was all just way too easy to believe in.

And, like its predecessors, The Infinite is wonderfully easy to read; Hoffman’s prose is somehow welcoming, something your brain can relax and let go into – without the writing ever devolving into the too-simplistic style I can’t stand. I can’t in good conscience call Infinite cosy – but it’s the kind of book where you don’t notice turning the pages, where it’s a surprise when you reach the end of a chapter because haven’t you only been reading for a minute or two???

No, no you have not: you’ve been reading for half an hour, and you never noticed because, despite all the deep dark themes at play in this book, it doesn’t feel heavy. It flows like cool, bright water beneath your eyes, drawing you along.

You only have to relax into the current.

The sun joins the mountains
And our hands join, too.
If this is the last night,
I spent it with you.

For most of my time reading it, The Infinite felt like a solid 3.5-4 star book. But once all the pieces fell into place–

Folx, I have no idea how to say it. But that ending? The one that’s been building since we first encountered The Outside in 2019?

That was.

That is.

Just.

Oh – and I say this fully aware of the hilarious irony – my gods!!!

That made the hairs on my arms stand up. That made me choke up. That made me glow golden in my chest, filled me with this huge incredible, indescribable feeling that lasted and lasted. Even now, weeks after reading it, I get goosebumps – the good kind – thinking about it.

Hoffman doesn’t deliver on all her promises – she goes light-years BEYOND them, gives us so much more than I ever expected, more than my wildest dreams for this series; tying together every heart-pounding theme that’s been woven through these books with even more fantastic gloriousness. Maybe a good chunk of The Infinite is sort of practical-feeling, but the finale itself is everything.

EVERYTHING. The kind of epic you feel reverberating through your bones; that makes you want to sing and scream because you just can’t CONTAIN it all!

I CAN’T OKAY? I CANNOT CONTAIN IT ALL.

SO YOU SHOULD READ IT TOO. SO YOU CAN HELP. WITH THE CONTAINING. YES?

YES?

EXCELLENT.

The Infinite is out on the 24th – next week! – and you absolutely cannot let yourself miss this incredible conclusion to this mind-breakingly epic trilogy!

The post An Infinitely Mindblowing Finale: The Infinite by Ada Hoffman appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

I Can’t Wait For…The Jaguar Path by Anna Stephens

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

This week my Can’t-Wait-For Book is The Jaguar Path by Anna Stephens!

The Jaguar Path (The Songs of the Drowned, #2) by Anna Stephens
Genres: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Mesoamerican-coded cast & setting, queer MCs, Deaf MC, bi/pansexual rep, queernorm setting
Published on: 16th February 2023
Goodreads

The Empire of Songs reigns supreme. Across all the lands of Ixachipan, its hypnotic, magical music sounds. Those who battled against the Empire have been enslaved and dispersed, taken far from their friends and their homes.

In the Singing City, Xessa must fight for the entertainment of her captors. Lilla and thousands of warriors are trained to serve as weapons for their enemies. And Tayan is trapped at the heart of the Empire’s power and magic, where the ruthless Enet’s ambition is ever growing.

Each of them harbours a secret hope, waiting for a chance to strike at the Empire from within.

But first they must overcome their own desires. Power can seduce as well as crush. And, in exchange for their loyalty, the Empire promises much.

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You might remember that back in October, I was EXTREMELY ENTHUSIASTIC about a certain Central American Epic Fantasy??? The one featuring Deaf monster-hunters with their monster-hunting service dogs??? And song-magic??? And a queernorm, gender-equal setting that is about as far as you can get from quasi-Medieval Europe???

YEAH. THAT ONE.

Well, it was the first book in what I believe is a trilogy, and next month The Jaguar Path, aka book two, will be unleashed upon us! It’s not really a spoiler to say that book one didn’t end well for most of our favourite characters (we all knew the Empire of Songs was going to win the war ;__; ) but there was also that JAW-DROPPING REVEAL in the final pages that tied so many things together and, you know, I NEED TO KNOW MORE LIKE YESTERDAY, PLEASE AND THANK YOU!

I am Very Concerned that this will be a hard read for me – I don’t do well with particular flavours of violence, and the first book, The Stone Knife, had plenty of very dark scenes/parts that I needed to skim over – but damn it, I simply CANNOT abandon this series! I NEED to know what happens to Xessa and Tayan and Lilla – specifically, I need to know they escape and everything ends okay for them! And, you know, THAT REVEAL. And what is going to happen with the World Spirit??? ARE WE ABOUT TO GRADUATE FROM HIGH FANTASY (which I define as involving the fate of kingdoms/countries) TO EPIC FANTASY (fate of the world)?!?!?!

I NEED TO KNOW, OKAY?

So yes, I am waiting EXTREMELY IMPATIENTLY for The Jaguar Path – which I just now realised might be an in-verse metaphor/term for guerrilla warfare, because jaguars are stealth predators, IS THAT WHAT THE TITLE MEANS?! – but luckily for the rest of you, there’s juuust about enough time to read The Stone Knife first, if you haven’t yet!

Meanwhile, I’ll just be. Over here. Making very frantic grabby-hands!

Join me in hitting the jaguar path running on Feb 16th!!!

The post I Can’t Wait For…The Jaguar Path by Anna Stephens appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday #120

FIVE new SFF books to get your hands on this week!

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

The Keeper's Six by Kate Elliott
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Portal Fantasy
Published on: 17th January 2023
Goodreads

Kate Elliott's action-packed The Keeper's Six features a world-hopping, bad-ass, spell-slinging mother who sets out to rescue her kidnapped son from a dragon lord with everything to lose.

There are terrors that dwell in the space between worlds.

It’s been a year since Esther set foot in the Beyond, the alien landscape stretching between worlds, crossing boundaries of space and time. She and her magical travelling party, her Hex, haven’t spoken since the Concilium banned them from the Beyond. But when she wakes in the middle of the night to her son’s cry for help, the members of her Hex are the only ones she can trust to help her bring him back from wherever he has been taken.

Esther will have to risk everything to find him. Undercover and hidden from the Concilium, she and her Hex will be tested by dragon lords, a darkness so dense it can suffocate, and the bones of an old crime come back to haunt her.

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It’s Kate Elliot, so of course I’m excited – but I’m EXTRA excited because for the first time ever (as far as I know) it’s a Kate Elliot book with a contemporary setting!!!

Of course, the characters immediately jump away from the world we know to go adventuring, but it still counts! And completely aside from the setting, I have a big soft spot for stories about parents out to rescue their kids.

I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Marisa Crane
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Sapphic MC
Published on: 17th January 2023
Goodreads

In a United States not so unlike our own, the Department of Balance has adopted a radical new form of law enforcement: rather than incarceration, wrongdoers are given a second (and sometimes, third, fourth, and fifth) shadow as a reminder of their crime—and a warning to those they encounter. Within the Department, corruption and prejudice run rampant, giving rise to an underclass of so-called Shadesters who are disenfranchised, publicly shamed, and deprived of civil rights protections.

Kris is a Shadester and a new mother to a baby born with a second shadow of her own. Grieving the loss of her wife and thoroughly unprepared for the reality of raising a child alone, Kris teeters on the edge of collapse, fumbling in a daze of alcohol, shame, and self-loathing. Yet as the kid grows, Kris finds her footing, raising a child whose irrepressible spark cannot be dampened by the harsh realities of the world.

With a first-person register reminiscent of the fierce self-disclosure of Sheila Heti and the poetic precision of Ocean Vuong, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself is a bold debut novel that examines the long shadow of grief, the hard work of parenting, and the power of queer resistance.

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This sounds grim enough that I’ll probably need to be in the right headspace when I pick it up, but I really want to know how the multiple shadows work and I’m always here for queer resistance!

Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt
Genres: Horror, Queer Protagonists
Published on: 17th January 2023
Goodreads

Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends, Ila and Hannah. Since then, Alice’s life has spiraled. She lives a haunted existence, selling videos of herself for money, going to parties she hates, drinking herself to sleep.

Memories of that night torment Alice, but when Ila asks her to return to the House, to go past the KEEP OUT sign and over the sick earth where teenagers dare each other to venture, Alice knows she must go.

Together, Alice and Ila must face the horrors that happened there, must pull themselves apart from the inside out, put their differences aside, and try to rescue Hannah, whom the House has chosen to make its own.

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I read the UK indie edition of this last year, and it blew me the fuck away – I couldn’t put it down, couldn’t tear my eyes away, couldn’t stop thinking about it when I finished it. (Why have I not reviewed it? Because WORDS FAIL ME, is why!) I don’t know if non-UK readers will catch all the nuance – Rumfitt is very specifically writing about transphobia in the UK, and some familiarity with the situation there definitely doesn’t hurt – but if you like queer horror, it is not to be missed under any circumstances!

Godkiller by Hannah Kaner
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bisexual MC
Published on: 19th January 2023
Goodreads

Kissen kills gods for a living, and she enjoys it. That is until she finds a god she cannot kill: Skediceth, god of white lies, who is connected to a little noble girl on the run.

Elogast fought in the god war, and helped purge the city of a thousand shrines before laying down his sword. A mysterious request from the King sends him racing back to the city he destroyed.

On the way he meets a godkiller, a little girl and a littler god, who cannot find out about his quest.

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There’s been so much hype for Godkiller, and from the early reviews it sounds like the hype is well-deserved! I love stories about gods, and I’m looking forward to seeing Kaner’s take on what a god is and how they work. Plus, a god of white lies? That’s definitely not something I’ve seen before!

Beautiful Undone by Melissa Polk
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Achillean MC
Published on: 19th January 2023
Goodreads

It’s been nearly ten years since Quade last heard from Victor, his childhood friend and eventual lover. Resigned to a life of work and drudgery, the last thing Quade could have anticipated was an ominous summons from Victor to attend him at his home, Suriyel. With little thought to the consequences of his actions, Quade makes immediate plans to leave the city. After all, no matter the time or distance between them, Quade could never deny Victor anything.

Victor, a powerful and reclusive mage, is now the Lord of Suriyel. With all the years he’s spent hiding from the world, he’s no longer able to imagine a life outside the boundaries of his lands. His every moment is devoted to untangling the curse wrapped around his sister, compounding her already failing health.

Unbeknownst to the world at large, the tarn at Suriyel acts as a gateway to myriad alternate worlds. That gateway has been breached by Tristan Armoni, a power-hungry duke from another dimension–a duke who happens to be Victor’s mirror image and seeks to control more than just his own world. All that stands between Suriyel and Tristan is Victor’s magic. Without knowing the full extent of Tristan’s goals, Victor is desperate to find a way to save both his world and his sister.

For Tristan, no act is too depraved and no step too far. He will stop at nothing to see his mysterious plans through to the end.

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Alternate worlds! This is apparently a retelling of Poe’s House of Usher, about which I know nothing, but regardless, I love the sound of this synopsis and am itching to give Beautiful Undone a try!

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

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