Siavahda's Blog, page 70

10 Books For Spring

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

This week’s prompt is Books On My Spring 2022 TBR. I have a lot of ARCs to get through this Spring, but I decided to keep them off this list, to make things more interesting.

Books That Are Waiting For Me

There are books that are published and waiting for me on my e-reader!

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom
Genres: Fantasy, Magical Realism, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir by Kai Cheng Thom is the highly sensational, ultra-exciting, sort-of true coming-of-age story of a young Asian trans girl, pathological liar, and kung-fu expert who runs away from her parents’ abusive home in a rainy city called Gloom. Striking off on her own, she finds her true family in a group of larger-than-life trans femmes who live in a mysterious pleasure district known only as the Street of Miracles. Under the wings of this fierce and fabulous flock, Dearly blossoms into the woman she has always dreamed of being, with a little help from the unscrupulous Doctor Crocodile. When one of their number is brutally murdered, the protagonist joins her sisters in forming a vigilante gang to fight back against the transphobes, violent johns, and cops that stalk the Street of Miracles. But when things go terribly wrong, she must find the truth within herself in order to stop the violence and discover what it really means to grow up and find your family.

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This is a book I’ve been dying to read for years, and when the publisher realised I’d emailed them about it multiple times over those years…they sent me a copy of the ebook!!! Excuse me while I sniffle a bit from Feels and gratitude.

Paradisa by Michelle Iannantuono
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads

Gods may be real, but the true heroes are human. That includes ex-Navy SEAL Connor Bishara, whose life fell apart when a colleague outed him as gay. In the ten years since his discharge, he’s lived each day listlessly as a fry cook, supporting his sister Clara's dreams instead of his own.

But as the political tensions of Paradisa - realm of the gods - start to bleed into Earth, a new door opens for saving the world. Taking the fight to them, Connor binds his soul to the enigmatic archangel Raphael—and struggles to cope with the sudden intimacy after years of shutting people out.

With the help of his sister and the varied pantheons of world mythology, Connor must open himself to love and defend men and gods from the encroaching war…or watch an army of evil destroy heaven from within.

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This one came up as a recommendation for fans of the Tarot Sequence – and we all know I’m a diehard fan of the Tarot Sequence!

From Dust, a Flame by Rebecca Podos
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads

Hannah’s whole life has been spent in motion. Her mother has kept her and her brother, Gabe, on the road for as long as she can remember, leaving a trail of rental homes and faded relationships behind them. No roots, no family but one another, and no explanations.

All of that changes on Hannah’s seventeenth birthday when she wakes up transformed, a pair of golden eyes with knife-slit pupils blinking back at her from the mirror—the first of many such impossible mutations. Promising that she knows someone who can help, her mother leaves Hannah and Gabe behind to find a cure. But as the days turn to weeks and their mother doesn’t return, they realize it’s up to them to find the truth.

What they discover is a family they never knew, and a history more tragic and fantastical than Hannah could have dreamed—one that stretches back to her grandmother’s childhood in Prague under the Nazi occupation, and beyond, into the realm of Jewish mysticism and legend. As the past comes crashing into the present, Hannah must hurry to unearth their family’s secrets—and confront her own hidden legacy in order to break the curse and save the people she loves most, as well as herself.

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I have been waiting for Rebecca Podos to write more fantasy since The Wise and the Wicked – and now she’s written one with a Jewish, sapphic MC! Can’t believe I haven’t started reading this yet.

Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments (Edinburgh Nights #2) by T.L. Huchu
Genres: Fantasy
Goodreads

Ropa Moyo’s ghostalking practice has tanked, desperate for money to pay bills and look after her family she reluctantly accepts a job to look into the history of a coma patient receiving treatment at the magical private hospital Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments. The patient is a teenage schoolboy called Max Wu, and healers at the hospital are baffled by the illness which has confounded medicine and magic.

Ropa’s investigation leads her to the Edinburgh Ordinary School for Boys, one of only the four registered schools for magic in the whole of Scotland (the oldest and only one that remains closed to female students).
But the headmaster there is hiding something and as more students succumb Ropa learns that a long-dormant and malevolent entity has once again taken hold in this world.

She sets off to track the current host for this spirit and try to stop it before other lives are endangered.

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See above – I can’t believe I haven’t cracked this open yet. I adored the first book in the series and really, really need to know what happens next!!!

Books I’ve Begun

Books I have actually started reading – I read a lot of books at once – but that are at risk of being overshadowed by the ARCs I need to get read!

Ansible: A Thousand Faces (The Complete Omnibus of Seasons 1-3) by Stant Litore
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Goodreads

This omnibus edition includes the entire Ansible series: Seasons 1-3.

"My mind has touched the stars, wearing a thousand faces..."

In Ansible, 25th century Islamic explorers transfer their minds across space and time to make first contact...and get marooned in alien bodies on alien worlds. Along the way, they encounter the most dangerous predator humanity has ever faced. And that species knows where earth is. Now a hijabi shapeshifter and her band of time travelers are all that stand between humanity and the last dark.

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I recently read and loved this anchor’s book about sapphic dinosaur riders, Incursion (reviewed here) and couldn’t resist pouncing on another of his works – especially when Ansible was pitched to me as featuring a ‘bisexual hijabi shapeshifting time traveler’!

Full disclosure, the first few stories in this collection are pretty dark, but I have been assured that things don’t stay grim for long.

Base Notes by Lara Elena Donnelly
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Speculative Fiction
Goodreads

A lasting impression is worth killing for in this intoxicating novel about memories and murder by the author of the Amberlough Dossier series.

In New York City everybody needs a side hustle, and perfumer Vic Fowler has developed a delicate art that has proved to be very lucrative: creating bespoke scents that evoke immersive memories—memories that, for Vic’s clients, are worth killing for. But the city is expensive, and these days even artisanal murder doesn’t pay the bills. When Joseph Eisner, a former client with deep pockets, offers Vic an opportunity to expand the enterprise, the money is too good to turn down. But the job is too intricate—and too dangerous—to attempt alone.

Manipulating fellow struggling artists into acting as accomplices is easy. Like Vic, they too are on the verge of burnout and bankruptcy. But as relationships become more complicated, Vic’s careful plans start to unravel. Hounded by guilt and a tenacious private investigator, Vic grows increasingly desperate to complete Eisner’s commission. Is there anyone—friends, lovers, coconspirators—that Vic won’t sacrifice for art?

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I’m a complete sucker for sensory prose, and this is a whole book about perfume! Perfume made by a nonbinary murderer! From an author I adore! And I love what I’ve read of it so far!

So gotta make time to actually keep reading it.

Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi
Genres: Fantasy
Goodreads

From National Book Award finalist Akwaeke Emezi comes a companion novel to the critically acclaimed PET that explores both the importance and cost of social revolution--and how youth lead the way.

After a childhood in foster care, Bitter is thrilled to have been chosen to attend Eucalyptus, a special school where she can focus on her painting surrounded by other creative teens. But outside this haven, the streets are filled with protests against the deep injustices that grip the city of Lucille.

Bitter's instinct is to stay safe within the walls of Eucalyptus . . . but her friends aren't willing to settle for a world that's so far away from what they deserve. Pulled between old friendships, her artistic passion, and a new romance, Bitter isn't sure where she belongs--in the studio or in the streets. And if she does find a way to help the revolution while being true to who she is, she must also ask: at what cost?

This timely and riveting novel--a companion to the National Book Award finalist Pet--explores the power of youth, protest, and art.

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See above. Sigh. It’s the prequel to one of my favourite books ever, too!

The Embroidered Book by Kate Heartfield
Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy
Goodreads

‘Power is not something you are given. Power is something you take. When you are a woman, it is a little more difficult, that’s all’

1768. Charlotte arrives in Naples to marry a man she has never met. Two years later, her sister Antoine is sent to France to marry another stranger. In the mirrored corridors of Versailles, they rename her Marie Antoinette.

But the sisters are not powerless. When they were only children, Charlotte and Antoine discovered a book of spells – spells that seem to work, with dark and unpredictable consequences.
In a world of vicious court politics, of discovery and dizzying change, Charlotte and Antoine use their secret skills to redefine their lives, becoming the most influential women of the age.

But every spell requires a sacrifice. As love between the sisters turns to rivalry, they will send Europe spiralling into revolution.

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I haven’t read a book quite like this one before – it does interesting things with, not time-skips but time-skims, maybe? Is that a thing? It should be a thing. The prose is so elegant, and the magic system not quite like any I’ve seen before (it takes…a lot out of you) and I’m fascinated to see how Heartfield weaves her narrative in with historical events. NEED TO GET BACK TO THIS!

Books I Need to Read For ARCs

A few of my ARCs are sequels, which means I want to reread the earlier books in their respective series to prepare for them!

The Stone in the Skull (Lotus Kingdoms, #1) by Elizabeth Bear
Genres: Fantasy, High Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads

The Stone in the Skull, the first volume in her new trilogy, takes readers over the dangerous mountain passes of the Steles of the Sky and south into the Lotus Kingdoms.

The Gage is a brass automaton created by a wizard of Messaline around the core of a human being. His wizard is long dead, and he works as a mercenary. He is carrying a message from a the most powerful sorcerer of Messaline to the Rajni of the Lotus Kingdom. With him is The Dead Man, a bitter survivor of the body guard of the deposed Uthman Caliphate, protecting the message and the Gage. They are friends, of a peculiar sort.

They are walking into a dynastic war between the rulers of the shattered bits of a once great Empire.

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I’m a passionate fan both of Bear’s Eternal Sky and Lotus Kingdoms trilogies, which take place in the same verse, and I have an ARC for book three of the Lotus Kingdoms books. But I definitely need a refresher before I dive in!

The Border Keeper by Kerstin Hall
Published on: 16th July 2019
Genres: Fantasy
Goodreads

"Beautifully and vividly imagined. Eerie, lovely, and surreal"—Ann Leckie

"Lush prose weaves around a dark heart in this twisty debut from Kerstin Hall. A fantastical wonder on every page, but one coated in blood, death and suffering.”—JY Yang

She lived where the railway tracks met the saltpan, on the Ahri side of the shadowline. In the old days, when people still talked about her, she was known as the end-of-the-line woman.

In The Border Keeper, debut author Kerstin Hall unfolds a lyrical underworld narrative about loss and renewal.

Vasethe, a man with a troubled past, comes to seek a favor from a woman who is not what she seems, and must enter the nine hundred and ninety-nine realms of Mkalis, the world of spirits, where gods and demons wage endless war.

The Border Keeper spins wonders both epic—the Byzantine bureaucracy of hundreds of demon realms, impossible oceans, hidden fortresses—and devastatingly personal—a spear flung straight, the profound terror and power of motherhood. What Vasethe discovers in Mkalis threatens to bring his own secrets into light and throw both worlds into chaos.

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This blew me away when I read it the first time, and now I need to reread it so I have everything clear in my head when I dive into Second Spear.

That’s my 10! What will you be reading this Spring?

The post 10 Books For Spring appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday #77

Fewer books this week, but they’ve heavy-hitters! Faeries, kaiju, and story machines – it’s a party!

Dark Sun: A Wicked Lovely Novel by Melissa Marr
Published on: 14th March 2022
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary Fantasy
Goodreads

When the bestselling WICKED LOVELY series ended, the Faery Courts were in order. In the years following, peace was still tenuous, but every court seemed devoted to balance.

But now, Urian—son of the former Dark King and the fated Summer Queen, Thelma Foy—has decided to claim his destiny.Urian knew the secrets that protected his relatives--both the mortal and the faery ones--since childhood. After the Summer Queen claimed the throne that should have been his mother’s and a lowly advisor claimed the throne that was his father’s, Uri is done hiding. The Dark Summer Prince is ready to claim one—or both—of the thrones that should rightfully be his.

When Urian discovers Kyla, unaware of her ancestry, he finally has the ally—or general—he’s needed. . . whether or not she agrees.

Far from the world of the fey, Kyla has spent her life aware that her bloodlines aren't as mortal as those around her. When one of the creatures she's been told to hide from discovers her in the desert, she decides to protect her human family by finding her place in the world of the faeries. She can’t trust Uri, but she feels drawn to him in a way she never imagined.

Secrets are revealed. Peace is threatened. And neither family ties nor accidental love can keep the balance between the courts now.

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It’s been a long time since I read the Wicked Lovely books, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been keeping track of new releases set in that world! The worldbuilding started out simple and spun out into something that surprised me, and it was one of the first times I encountered the concept of polyamory.

Dark Sun is set quite a while after the main books, it sounds like, but I still want to check it out!

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
Published on: 15th March 2022
Genres: Sci Fi
Goodreads

The Kaiju Preservation Society is John Scalzi's first standalone adventure since the conclusion of his New York Times bestselling Interdependency trilogy.

When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls "an animal rights organization." Tom's team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on.

What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. They're the universe's largest and most dangerous panda and they're in trouble.

It's not just the Kaiju Preservation Society that's found its way to the alternate world. Others have, too--and their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.

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I’ve actually never read Scalzi before, but I can’t resist this premise! A planet-sized wildlife preserve, with Godzilla-esque beasties needing preserving? Sign me the hell up!

Lead Me Astray by Sondi Warner
Representation: Black pansexual MC, pansexual love interest, nonbinary love interest, F/M/NB, polyamory
Published on: 15th March 2022
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads

Aurie Edison shouldn't linger in Overlay City, a mystical world of ley lines hidden within New Orleans. Luckily, there's a seductive Empath named Mys who pledges to get her where she needs to be. Then there's Detective Zyr Ravani, the hot werewolf tasked with keeping them safe. But what's the worst that can happen to a Ghost?

See, Aurie's not living her best life. But she COULD be if she accepts the powerful desire swirling between the three of them.

Ready to get away with something different? Solve Aurie's murder with Detective Zyr Ravani and the genderqueer Mx. Mys as you fall head over heels for this threesome along the way. Go ahead. #GetAwayWithIt

Introducing an adventurous tale of self-discovery, magic and menagé a trois. LEAD ME ASTRAY is a fresh new story from an authentic LGBTQ voice. Add this unicorn to your reading list and find out why it's a winner.

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I’m That Person who typically skips over sex scenes, but I’ve been trying to read more Romance, and I’ve heard nothing but good things about Lead Me Astray. Plus, that premise? I’m intrigued by the magic and hopeful for the poly!

When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
Representation: Black MC, Black Rastafarian MC
Published on: 15th March 2022
Genres: Fantasy
Goodreads

A mythic love story set in Trinidad and Tobago, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo's radiant debut introduces two unforgettable outsiders brought together by their connection with the dead.

You were never the smartest child, but even you should know that when a dead woman offers you a cigarette, the polite thing to do would be to take it. Especially when that dead woman is your mother.

The St. Bernard women have lived in Morne Marie, the house on top of a hill outside Port Angeles, for generations. Built from the ashes of a plantation that enslaved their ancestors, it has come to shelter a lineage that is bonded by much more than blood. One woman in each generation of St. Bernards is responsible for the passage of the city's souls into the afterlife. But Yejide's relationship with her mother, Petronella, has always been contorted by anger and neglect, which Petronella stubbornly carries to her death bed, leaving Yejide unprepared to fulfill her destiny.

Raised in the countryside by a devout Rastafarian mother, Darwin has always abided by the religious commandment not to interact with death. He has never been to a funeral, much less seen a dead body. But when his ailing mother can no longer work and the only job he can find is grave digging, he must betray the life she built for him in order to provide for them both. Newly shorn of his dreadlocks and his past and determined to prove himself, Darwin finds himself adrift in a city electric with possibility and danger.

Yejide and Darwin will meet inside the gates of Fidelis, Port Angeles's largest and oldest cemetery, where the dead lie uneasy in their graves and a reckoning with fate beckons them both. A masterwork of lush imagination and immersive lyricism, When We Were Birds is a spellbinding novel about inheritance, loss, and love's seismic power to heal.

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This sounds a bit outside my usual wheelhouse, but again, nothing but praise from the early readers. Definitely want to give it ago!

Mage of Fools by Eugen Bacon
Representation: African cast + setting
Published on: 15th March 2022
Genres: Fantasy
Goodreads

In the dystopian world of Mafinga, Jasmin must contend with a dictator’s sorcerer to cleanse the socialist state of its deadly pollution.

Mafinga's malevolent king dislikes books and, together with his sorcerer Atari, has collapsed the environment to almost uninhabitable. The sun has killed all the able men, including Jasmin’s husband Godi.

But Jasmin has Godi’s secret story machine that tells of a better world, far different from the wastelands of Mafinga. Jasmin’s crime for possessing the machine and its forbidden literature filled with subversive text is punishable by death.

Fate grants a cruel reprieve in the service of a childless queen who claims Jasmin’s children as her own. Jasmin is powerless—until she discovers secrets behind the king and his sorcerer.

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I’ve been excited for this one for a while – stories about stories and storytelling will do that! I’m very interested in Jasmin’s story machine, and I am feral for protective parents out to rescue their kids!

Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde
Representation: Nigerian setting + cast, F/F
Published on: 15th March 2022
Genres: Speculative Fiction
Goodreads

Èkó, the spirit of Lagos, and his loyal minion Tatafo weave trouble through the streets of Lagos and through the lives of the ‘vagabonds’ powering modern Nigeria: the queer, the displaced and the footloose.

With Tatafo as our guide we meet these people in the shadows. Among them are a driver for a debauched politician; a lesbian couple whose tender relationship sheds unexpected light on their experience with underground sex work; a mother who attends a secret spiritual gathering that shifts her reality. As their lives begin to intertwine—in markets and underground clubs, in churches and hotel rooms—the vagabonds are seized and challenged by the spirits who command the city. A force is drawing them all together, but for what purpose?

In her debut novel VAGABONDS! Eloghosa Osunde tackles the insidious nature of Nigerian capitalism, corruption and oppression, and offers a defiant, joyous and inventive tribute to all those for whom life itself is a form of resistance.

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This sounds weird and strange and beautiful, and I can’t wait to dive into it. I have very little idea of what to expect, but I have high hopes!

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd
Published on: 15th March 2022
Genres: Speculative Fiction
Goodreads

"A wildly entertaining, imaginative ride with a cinematic plot that keeps the pages turning." —Real Simple

From the critically acclaimed author of The Book of M, a highly imaginative thriller about a young woman who discovers that a strange map in her deceased father’s belongings holds an incredible, deadly secret—one that will lead her on an extraordinary adventure and to the truth about her family’s dark history.

What is the purpose of a map?

Nell Young’s whole life and greatest passion is cartography. Her father, Dr. Daniel Young, is a legend in the field and Nell’s personal hero. But she hasn’t seen or spoken to him ever since he cruelly fired her and destroyed her reputation after an argument over an old, cheap gas station highway map.

But when Dr. Young is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library, with the very same seemingly worthless map hidden in his desk, Nell can’t resist investigating. To her surprise, she soon discovers that the map is incredibly valuable and exceedingly rare. In fact, she may now have the only copy left in existence . . . because a mysterious collector has been hunting down and destroying every last one—along with anyone who gets in the way.

But why?

To answer that question, Nell embarks on a dangerous journey to reveal a dark family secret and discovers the true power that lies in maps . . .

Perfect for fans of Joe Hill and V. E. Schwab, The Cartographers is an ode to art and science, history and magic—a spectacularly imaginative, modern story about an ancient craft and places still undiscovered.ps...

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I remember The Memory of M made a huge splash when it was released. This is the author’s sophomore novel, and I’m cautiously interested – this has been majorly hyped, which always makes me wary, but I’ve also seen positive reviews from readers I trust, so I’m probably going to give it a try.

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

The post Must-Have Monday #77 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Sunday Soupçons #2

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!

Another three mini-reviews for you this week, including one Contemporary Fiction, one Paranormal Romance/Erotica, and one…I think we’ll have to call it Sci-Fi?

The Book of Firsts (A Very Secret Garden #1) by Karan K. Anders
Goodreads

Three boys, the 'kings' of the school. One cynical newcomer. An outrageous competition.

When Mika Niles overhears the details of "The Book of Firsts" she's at first bemused, then scornful, then intrigued. Judging which of three very handsome young men is best at kissing, and...?

With no time in her final year for serious attachments, a series of lunchtime trysts is more than tempting – and an opportunity like this might never come her way again. But this light-hearted game is also a scandalous secret, and few can play with fire and walk away unscathed.

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I don’t read a lot of contemporary fiction, and I definitely don’t read books about sex, but I took a gamble on The Book of Firsts was written by one of my favourite authors under a new penname, and because she joked that there were almost sixty sex scenes, but that it somehow wasn’t erotica. Which was confusing, but made one hopeful.

And I ended up really loving it! I adored the main character – first-person is usually a turn-off for me, but I loved being inside her head; although I don’t think she’s meant to be autistic, the way her mind works just makes sense to me, and she has a wonderful wry sense of humour and no tolerance for nonsense. The boys grew on me over the course of the book, and I loved the surprise of what their long-term goals and wishes were.

Plot-wise, it’s a sex competition designed to draw one of the boys out of his not-quite-depression, mixed in with low-key school and family drama, and, eventually, the mystery of who’s behind the accidents that are clearly not accidents, but someone out to seriously hurt the boys. That makes it sound very urgent and fast-paced, but it felt escapist and calm and low-stakes the whole way through.

And the sex scenes really don’t manage to turn this into erotica – somehow The Book of Firsts is a book about sex that really isn’t about sex!

Exodus 20:3 by Freydís Moon
Representation: Queer trans Latino MC, masc nonbinary love interest, M/M or M/NB (depending on your take)
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads

Religious eroticism and queer emancipation meet in a claustrophobic monster-romance about divinity, sexuality, and freedom.

When Diego López is guilted by his mother into taking a low-key construction job in New Mexico, he doesn’t expect to be the only helping hand at Catedral de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. But the church is abandoned, decrepit, and off the beaten path, and the only other person for miles is its handsome caretaker, Ariel Azevedo.

Together, Diego and Ariel refurbish the old church, sharing stories of their heritage, experiences, and desires. But as the long days turn into longer nights, Diego begins to see past Ariel’s human mirage and finds himself falling into lust—and maybe something else—with one of God’s first creations.

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Exodus 20:3, on the other hand, is erotic as hell – or maybe that should be as heaven, given that the love interest is a Biblical-style angel.

Which was one of the main draws for me: I’m just not interested in ‘normal’ erotica, I’m afraid. But offer me a trans Latino lead getting entangled with a Biblical-style angel??? That ticks so many of my boxes I cannot even.

To be honest though, I feel very protective and defensive of this book. It feels like calling it ‘erotica’ belittles it a bit – not because there’s anything wrong with erotica, but because Exodus 20:3 is deep and meaningful, tackling a lot more than some, ahem, niche kinks. Which – don’t get me wrong; the sex is blisteringly well-written and all-around delicious.

But what made me breath catch in my throat was the gentleness, the tenderness, not just from the love interest but that the narrative itself shows Diego, a Latino trans man who does sex work and has gotten in trouble for drugs – he meets Ariel because he’s needs a job, needs to make money to pay his mother back for paying his bail…and, more than the money, needs to do ‘honest’ work to prove to her that he can. Diego is at the centre of a Venn diagram of people the world doesn’t treat gently, so it made my heart ache to see someone like him be…

Well. To see someone like him be loved, honestly. To see someone like him not be condemned for who he is, what he does, or the mistakes he’s made – but get a happy ending instead. A happy ending that isn’t rainbows and cake frosting, but that is meaningful and powerful and made me want to cheer.

Because fuck ICE.

I have a special love for angels – when they’re being portrayed as wondrous or terrifying or both, alien beings rather than humans-plus-wings – and not only does Moon fully deliver on the Biblical-style angel-ness, but I was genuinely impressed and delighted with the worldbuilding. It’s hard to pack a lot of worldbuilding into a novella, but Moon does it quickly and deftly, keeping things deceptively simple and elegant. And I really liked how Moon managed to craft their angels as outside of any particular religion without divorcing them from their religious significance – A++!

And the romance? Ariel and Diego are magnificent, individually and together. Enough said!

Sexy, poignant, heart-warming – Exodus 20:3 has it all, and if you’re open to hell-hot erotica with monsterfuckery, I can’t recommend this one enough! I know I’ll definitely be keeping a close eye out for Moon’s future books.

(The Bible passage Exodus 20:3 is You shall have no other gods before Me, by the way.)

Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi, Speculative Fiction
Goodreads

A work-from-home, comic tour-de-force that takes place entirely in a PR firm's Slack channels--a strange digital landscape where an employee claims to be literally trapped inside. For fans of Office Space, Then We Came to the End and Severance. And anyone who has ever struggled with an emoticon.

Gerald, a mid-level employee of a New York-based public relations firm, has been uploaded into the company's internal Slack channels--at least his consciousness has. His colleagues assume it's just an elaborate ploy to exploit their lax work-from-home policy, but now that his productivity is through the roof, they are only too happy to indulge him. Disembodied and alarmed by the looming abyss of an eternity on-line, Gerald enlists his co-worker Pradeep to find out what happened to his body and help him escape. As Gerald plunges deeper into the surprisingly expansive Slack landscape, he finds an unlikely ally in Slackbot, Slack's AI assistant, who helps him navigate his new digital reality. Meanwhile, the team's real-world problems are in danger of snowballing out of control. Top client Bjärk dog food might be poisoning Pomeranians across the country; someone is sabotaging the boss's office furniture; Tripp and Beverly are breaking the unspoken rule against office romances; and the incessant howling of wild dogs is starting to drive Lydia insane. Also: Why is Slackbot so interested in Gerald? And what in the hell does the :dusty-stick: emoji mean? Hilarious, irreverent, and wholly original, Calvin Kasulke's Several People Are Typing is a satire of both corporate and contemporary life, and a perfect antidote to the way we live now.

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My second read for the Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards went much better than the first! This was addictively readable, easy but still plenty compelling, and I think anyone who’s ever used Slack – especially for work – will get some good laughs out of Several People Are Typing. I was also pleasantly surprised by the queer rep – I had no idea there was going to be any!

A very quick, surprisingly fun read that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Solid four stars!

Have you read any of these, or plan to? Let me know!

The post Sunday Soupçons #2 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Sapphic Raptor-Riders FTW: Incursion by Stant Litore

Incursion (The Dakotaraptor Riders Book 1) by Stant Litore
Representation: Sapphic MC, Deaf sapphic wife, F/F, queernorm world
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Goodreads

Looking for a thrilling tale with lesbian dakotaraptor riders, were-brachiosaurs, Slavic witches, triceratops cowboys, carnivorous cacti, and invaders with machine guns mounted on deathreaper tyrannosaurs?

If you’ve been looking for a series like that, Stant Litore has your back. In Incursion, join Sasha Nightwatcher and her wife Yekaterina on a wild dash across the violet prairie to save their alien homeworld.

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~purple grass
~dinosaurs!
~guns = clocks
~warrior-women riding dakotaraptors
~lassos are sexy
~there are bad guys coming out of the sky

I wasn’t a dino-fan as a kid – I got bitten by the Ancient Egypt bug instead – but it would take a stronger person than myself to resist ‘sapphic raptor-riding warriors kicking ass on a purple planet’. HI YES THANK YOU, I’LL TAKE TEN!

Incursion more than delivers on its promises. Written in first-person present-tense from the perspective of Sasha, a Nightwatcher of the Humming People, this is an introspective but still quick-paced adventure story, and the only thing wrong with it is that there’s no sequel yet!

The planet Peace is far from the world we know, in more ways than mere distance: the grass is purple, the sky delivers an unpredictable and deadly ‘red rain’, and whatever native wildlife once existed have been replaced by…dinosaurs.

I know it sounds silly. The thing is, it isn’t.

Whimsical, yes – there are definitely elements of the worldbuilding that are wonderful and make you smile, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that; especially since Litore is very careful to make it all fit together. Even though Incursion features multiple cultures and points of view coming into contact (and sometimes conflict), it doesn’t feel like a jumble. Nor do the elements of the book feel random and disjointed – dinosaurs, spaceships, and clocks sound like they couldn’t possibly all go together in any cohesive way, but in Litore’s hands, they absolutely do!

The Humming People are one of the many societies living on planet Peace; descended from a long-ago Founder who brought her people here from another world entirely. The Founder was the one to populate the planet with lab-grown dinosaurs, and the only mammals around seem to be the terrifying hyaenodons – once-real animals that lived on our world roughly 42 million years ago.

Protecting the Humming People from hyaenadons and other threats are the Nightwatchers, extremely badass women who ride raptors raised by hand from the egg, wielding kopyes – think double-bladed lightsabres – with deadly precision. Nightwatchers must run far and fast, in tightly-knit packs, to guard their semi-nomadic people, fighting off slavers and dangerous fauna, and always on the lookout for the red rain.

The main character Sasha is one of these Nightwatchers, and so is her wife Yekaterina (aka Katya). But they don’t hold quite the same position in their pack – because while Katya is from a strong, widespread family, Sasha is the last of her line. And to the Humming People – who value community over all – that makes her a ‘weak strap.’ A family is many lives braided together, but Sasha is a single one, an individual alone. Braided rope holds under pressure, but a single strand will snap. So how can Sasha’s pack depend on her?

Awareness of her pack’s dubious uncertainty about her is definitely one of the reasons Sasha is so quick to separate from the group, running off with her raptor and her wife to patrol apart from their pack. There’s nothing very odd about this – the Nightwatchers aren’t a strict, regimented military unit; they have a great deal of individual freedom, and so long as Sasha and Katya are at the meet-up point days from now, no one minds.

But they run straight into a very unexpected…adventure.

See, the Humming People are a low-tech society – they trade for their kopyes, and have no other powered technology, no electricity or machinery. But they know they came from another planet; they know space travel is a thing. They even know that people from space sometimes come to Peace and cause varying degrees of trouble – they use the word incursion to describe these instances; hence the title. Because what Sasha and Katya discover is a murderer from the stars – a person like no one they’ve ever met or heard of before, with abilities that come straight out of the Humming People’s myths. A murderer they might not be able to stop.

Litore’s prose is blessedly easy; despite touching or outright tackling a number of heavy topics, Incursion always felt like a light, escapist read, with just enough emotional complexity to hold your attention and keep things interesting. There’s Sasha’s low-key (and sometimes not so low-key) insecurities about her place among her people; her wariness when she and her wife encounter a self-exiled member of one of the Humming People’s greatest enemies; her inability to comprehend the murderer’s technology and powers. There’s the relationship between Sasha and Katya, and Sasha and her (absolutely marvellous) raptor Ihira, and the different ways Sasha and Katya each interact with Dmitri, the aforementioned self-exile. And there is always the thought, at the forefront of Sasha’s mind, of how their experiences will affect the wider community of the Humming People.

If you visit this blog even occasionally, you should know I’m obsessed with worldbuilding, and Litore gives me so much to obsess over! Which is not to say that the reader is drowned in detail, because we’re not – at a quick glance, Incursion‘s worldbuilding might be mistaken for simplistic. The first time we hear of the Ticktocks – the enemies of the Humming People I mentioned before – it’s a little hard to take them seriously. (I mean…Ticktocks?) But Litore quickly and deftly sketches for us a society obsessed with clocks and numerology, and you know what, it completely works.

The culture of the Humming People is obviously the focus of Incursion, and so we learn a lot more about them than we do the Ticktocks – but they’re just as beautifully crafted, as a fictional society. It’s clear from their legends (and naming conventions) that they’re originally of Slavic descent, but for the Humming People, Baba Yaga’s walking house has raptor legs, not the legs of a chicken – the clear Slavic influences have adapted to the world of Peace in a way that feels incredibly organic and absolutely spot-on. And that’s without getting into how the Humming People venerate stories and storytelling, or how Katya being Deaf in no way slows her down in a culture where everyone speaks Sign, or the many ways in which the Humming People’s value of braids and community manifests itself. It’s all just gods’ damn wonderful.

One detail I do have to mention, just because it impressed me so damn much: Litore doesn’t handwave anything about the dinosaurs. The raptors of the Nightwalkers aren’t just raptors; they’re specifically dakotaraptors. The t-rex isn’t just a t-rex; it’s a Reaper of Death, aka Thanatotheristes Degrootorum. I already mentioned the hyaenodons, which I spent most of the book assuming weren’t real until I paused to go look them up. Every dinosaur (or megafauna) mentioned in Incursion really existed, and Litore is up to date on current research – hence the dakotaraptors having feathers and the Reaper of Death being included at all, since its discovery was only publicly announced in 2020, a year before Incursion was released!

#SorryNotSorry, that kind of attention to detail makes me swoon.

Peace is Not Quiet

In conclusion: I NEED THE SEQUEL IMMEDIATELY.

Come on. Sapphic dakotaraptor riders. What more could you POSSIBLY need to hear?!

The post Sapphic Raptor-Riders FTW: Incursion by Stant Litore appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Fucked-Up Elves Are Fucking Awesome: Pennyblade by J. L. Worrad

Pennyblade by J.L. Worrad, James Worrad
Representation: Lesbian MC, bi/pansexual love interest, F/F, secondary gay character, tertiary trans character, extremely minor asexual character
Published on: 29th March 2022
Genres: Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
ISBN: 1789097614
Goodreads

A sharp-tongued disgraced-noble-turned-mercenary has to stop the world collapsing into chaos in this gripping, savagely funny epic fantasy packed with unforgettable characters, for fans of Joe Abercrombie.

Exile. Mercenary. Lover. Monster. Pennyblade.

Kyra Cal’Adra has spent the last four years on the Main, living in exile from her home, her people, her lover and her past. A highblood commrach—the ancient race of the Isle, dedicated to tradition and the perfection of the blood—she’s welcome among the humans of the Main only for the skill of her rapier, her preternatural bladework. They don't care which of the gleaming towers she came from, nor that her grandmother is matriarch of one of Corso’s most powerful families.

But on the main, women loving women is a sin punishable by death. Kyra is haunted by the ghost of Shen, the love of her life, a lowblood servant woman whom Kyra left behind as she fled the Isle.

When a simple contract goes awry, and her fellow pennyblades betray her, Kyra is set onto a collision course with her old life, and the age-old conflict between the Main and the Isle threatens to erupt once more.

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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~marriage-necklaces are awful
~twins are always gay, it’s a rule
~elite guard of post-menopausal women!
~never underestimate a nun
~masks, masks, masks

Pennyblade is a book that really shouldn’t have worked for me – because I do not read grimdark, and Pennyblade is, I think, grimdark.

But not very grimdark, in my opinion. Pennyblade is more crude than outright grim – I think it takes more than mud and shit and cursing to make a story grimdark, and the all-pervading sense of hopelessness and misery and people-are-awful,-always that is grimdark’s signature? Isn’t quite here. Pennyblade is sort of…sneaky-snarky-hopeful-maybe, under the mud and the blood. The ending, especially, left me grinning, and I don’t think grimdark really does that.

I don’t remember what convinced me to request a by-all-appearances-grimdark novel about a sapphic elf, but…probably it was the sapphic elf? Regardless, I’m so glad that I did, because Pennyblade is surprisingly awesome.

Pennyblade is narrated by Kyra Cal’Adra, a commrach (elf) who has fled the Isle of her people and now lives among humans on the mainland. The chapters alternate between two timelines; the events leading up to Kyra’s self-exile, and the mess she finds herself embroiled in while working as a ‘pennyblade’ – aka a sellsword or mercenary. The two storylines entwine in some very unexpected, clever ways, and although I was originally more interested in the earlier timeline set on the Isle, I ended up extremely invested in the ‘present’ timeline as well.

Whenever Kyran set out to acomplish something in life, life would step back and demur.

Reading about Kyra’s life on the Isle, it’s not at all clear why or how she left; the Cal’Adra’s are highbloods, nobility, and Kyra lives a very privileged life because of it. But those privileges come at a high price; namely, a complete lack of control over her own life. This isn’t because she’s a woman, but because she’s a highblood – one of those bloodlines that are being carefully cultivated by the unquestionable Explainers, with the goal being the Final Perfection – the ideal, perfected commrach.

‘You know, for all my people’s faults, not one commrach has starved or been without a roof in sixteen thousand years. And the emphasis there is sixteen thousand years. You creatures are lucky to make anything last a hundred.’

Basically? Elves are eugenicists. Hardcore eugenicists. And obviously eugenicists are terrible, but it’s the total subversion of the Wise-Beautiful-Elevated Elves trope that delights me so freaking much! The commrach fit the trope in many ways – they’re faster and more graceful than humans, they have limited forms of magic, and their society doesn’t use money, has no homeless people, and are fully accepting of all flavours of queerness (Kyra herself is a lesbian, her brother Kyran is gay, and we meet or hear about bisexual, trans, nonbinary, and asexual characters). At first, they look so much better than humans (who are living in the squalor, violence and homophobia typical of Fantasy’s take on the Medieval period) that no comparison is possible…but bit by bit, that layer of gilding flakes away, revealing something much uglier underneath.

“That’s anger talking,” Kyran said.

“Common sense,” I replied.

Kyran snorted. “How often the former masquerades as the latter.”

There are two ways to read Pennyblade: either it’s extremely male-gaze-y and thus kinda gross, or Worrad is a genius. See, sex is a very big deal in this book; there’s a lot of it, and most eyebrow-raisingly, we learn that the commach essentially go into heat like cats. This involves a lot of seriously pornographic behaviour, and a fair bit that’s quite cringey; I found it hard to take how female commach make yowly noises (again, like cats in heat) during their ‘equinox’. Given that Kyra is a lesbian, and thus almost all of the sex scenes revolve around F/F sex – and given how crudely it’s all depicted – it’s very easy to accuse Worrad of writing Pennyblade as an excuse to play with a sexual fantasy, rather than writing it as a ‘proper’ novel (whatever ‘proper’ is supposed to mean).

But I would argue that what reads as a gross male gaze on a queer woman is actually a majorly important element of the book. The commach believe themselves to be the pinnacle of civilisation, but that stance is majorly undercut once you see them making yowly cat noises at each other. (The men make fewer stupid noises, but they’re easily as sex-drunk when heat hits.) The crude, animalistic behaviour we see the commach engage in – more, that they can’t stop themselves from engaging in – proves to the reader that they have a very obvious bestial aspect to them, and no amount of (often justified) contempt for humanity can make that untrue. The commach can call themselves the most sophisticated beings on the planet all they like, but the narrative makes it clear that they’re just as much animals as humans are.

And I think the proof of this is: the sex scenes that actually matter, that take place between two people who love each other – those scenes are all, without fail, fade-to-black. Worrad draws a respectful veil of privacy over characters who are, for lack of a better term, making love; it’s only the fucking, the animalistic sex that means nothing, that appears in detail on-page.

“Love enough to burn the world?” you said.

“Is there any other kind?”

So while I completely understand that this book is not going to be for everyone, I closed the final pages impressed with Worrad’s worldbuilding, and how he managed to tell us the commach are not what they say they are – without ever actually telling us, but by showing us instead. It reads like one of the best examples of show-don’t-tell that I’ve come across in a good while.

Pennyblade is crude, rude, violent, and contains a lot of appalling things, but I absolutely adored the worldbuilding. Awful as they are, the commach might be my favourite elves ever – specifically because they’re so fucked-up (and so not, at the same time, in other ways). I can’t say you’ll finish the book loving Kyra – she’s not really what you’d call likeable – but I ended up hugely invested in her story and rooting for her all the way.

I did think the ending was a little weak – the twist-reveal was amazing; the response to it was a bit too cliche – but all-in-all, as long as you know what you’re getting into re grimdark themes and very crude sex all over the place, I strongly recommend it!

Pennyblade comes out on the 29th of March, and you can preorder it now!

The post Fucked-Up Elves Are Fucking Awesome: Pennyblade by J. L. Worrad appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

I Can’t Wait For…The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

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 is The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna!

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna
Representation: Brown MC
Published on: 23rd August 2022
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary Fantasy
Goodreads

A warm and uplifting novel about an isolated witch whose opportunity to embrace a quirky new family--and a new love--changes the course of her life.

As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don't mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she's used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos pretending to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously.

But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges, but also an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and...Jamie. The handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House would do anything to protect the children, and as far as he's concerned, a stranger like Mika is a threat. An irritatingly appealing threat.

As Mika begins to find her place at Nowhere House, the thought of belonging somewhere begins to feel like a real possibility. But magic isn't the only danger in the world, and when a threat comes knocking at their door, Mika will need to decide whether to risk everything to protect a found family she didn't know she was looking for....

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I fell in love with Mandanna’s debut The Lost Girl (which is a story about cloning, not a Peter Pan retelling) as a teenager, and have been eagerly following her career ever since. But I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited for one of her books as I am for this one! I have a HUGE love for contemporary witch stories, I adore protective librarians, and have a very special place in my heart for unprepared grown-ups ending up mentoring and/or emotionally adopting a bunch of kids – young children or teens, either is good! And I’m willing to bet Mika ends up a mentor/big sister/mother to her three students.

This just sounds so sweet and escapist, exactly the kind of thing I’ve been craving, and I already know I love Mandanna’s writing. Which all together has me making grabby hands for The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches!

The post I Can’t Wait For…The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Sunday Soupçons #1

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!

For my very first Sunday Soupçons, I scribbled about Chorus of Lies by Alexandra Rowland, By the Blood of Rowans by Xan Van Rooyan, and Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson!

A Choir of Lies (A Conspiracy of Truths, #2) by Alexandra Rowland
Representation: Gay MC, M/M, queernorm world, secondary nonbinary characters
Genres: Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
ISBN: 1534412832
Goodreads

A young storyteller must embrace his own skills—and the power of stories—to save a nation from economic ruin, in the standalone sequel to A Conspiracy of Truths.

Three years ago, Ylfing watched his master-Chant tear a nation apart with nothing but the words on his tongue. Now Ylfing is all alone in a new realm, brokenhearted and grieving—but a Chant in his own right, employed as a translator to a wealthy merchant of luxury goods, Sterre de Waeyer. But Ylfing has been struggling to come to terms with what his master did, with the audiences he’s been alienated from, and with the stories he can no longer trust himself to tell.

That is, until Ylfing’s employer finds out what he is, what he does, and what he knows. At Sterre’s command, Ylfing begins telling stories once more, fanning the city into a mania for a few shipments of an exotic flower. The prices skyrocket, but when disaster looms, Ylfing must face what he has done and decide who he wants to be: a man who walks away and lets the city shatter, as his master did? Or will he embrace the power of story to save ten thousand lives?

With a memorable cast of characters, starring a fan-favorite from A Conspiracy of Truths, and a timely message, Choir of Lies reminds us that the words we wield can bring destruction—or salvation.

(AO3/Fanfic tags for this book available here.)

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A Choir of Lies is the sequel to A Conspiracy of Truths, but although Conspiracy offers context and some backstory I think Choir works as a standalone. So feel free to dive in even if you’ve skipped Conspiracy!

(Although you should definitely check out Conspiracy too, because it’s great as well!)

Basically, this is the story of a Chant – someone who travels the world collecting and selling stories – not so much settling in as washing up in fantasy!Holland, and using his storytelling powers to create a secondary-world equivalent of the Tulip Mania. He’s depressed, mostly because the events of Conspiracy of Truths scarred him, and his Master Chant emotionally abused him and then abandoned him.

And then another Chant appears. One who is the opposite of his Master – and everything he’s been taught about Chants – in every way.

Choir is one of those wonderful books that is peppered full of hilarious footnotes – the premise being that Ylfing has written all of this down himself, and now the other Chant – Mistress Chant – is reading it and scribbling very unimpressed notes in the margins. Quite a few of them go beyond funny and are genuinely meaningful; others are a good reminder that we trust first-person narration a little too much, as Mistress Chant challenges and corrects Ylfing’s portrayal of events (particularly any time the two of them interacted).

Stories about the power of stories get me every time, but it’s hard to put into words why I found Choir so compelling; partly because I really enjoyed both Ylfing and Mistress Chant as narrators, partly because I’m weirdly fond of fictional economics (watching the not-tulips Tulip Mania get more and more out of hand), and… There’s just so much heart in this book. There’s so much, not just about stories and storytelling, but about community and what it means to be good and how people are complicated and, when push comes to shove, there maybe isn’t a single objective truth, ever. I loved the growing shadow of magic getting stronger and stronger in the background; I loved the easy, casual queerness; I loved how many layers there were to the story. I loved the format, with us reading what’s effectively Ylfing’s diary, and Mistress Chant commenting on it from the future (from our perspective), giving us clues as to what was coming and also a lot more insight into what was going on, things Ylfing didn’t notice or understand.

I had to hug my e-reader to my chest after I finished reading this one. I adored it.

By the Blood of Rowans by Xan van Rooyen
Representation: Nonbinary MC, bi/pansexual MC, M/NB
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads

The Sheehy witches are the most feared and detested family on the island of Inisliath, and none more so than Rowan.

As a deathwalker, Rowan ferries island souls to the Otherworld, experiencing their deaths and carrying their memories like ghosts within him. It's a fated role he accepts even as it inexorably destroys him.
When the magic on the island starts to seep away from the other founding families, everyone blames the Sheehys—especially when islanders start dying.

Ash is sick of their father's fists and constantly having to apologize for who they are. Life on Inisliath might be the fresh start Ash and their mum need, and meeting soft-spoken, curly-haired Rowan feels like the ray of sunshine Ash has desperately needed—but everything goes sideways when Ash's mum becomes lead detective on a series of ritualistic murders allegedly tied to island magic, and Ash's family history.

The islanders are convinced Rowan is guilty, but Ash refuses to believe it. When Ash does some investigating of their own, they discover Rowan is far more likely to be the next victim. With time running out to save Rowan, Ash will have to choose between a life free of their father or the boy they’re starting to love. Meanwhile Rowan will have to decide just how much he's willing to sacrifice to save his family from the darkness about to be unleashed on the island.

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By the Blood of Rowans was eerie and lovely and fairly dark, and wow I wanted to push most of the characters off a cliff (not the MCs, who are sweethearts, but…pretty much everybody else). For a murder-mystery it wasn’t very investigative, which I appreciated because murder mysteries are not actually my thing; instead it’s quite…introspective might be the word? It felt slow and quiet, even though it’s packed full of so many different flavours of hate. I did think a few things came together a bit too neatly, but the twist-reveal of the motive for the murders was excellent, and I really did like the relationship between Ash and Rowan.

Ash’s sperm-donor still needs to be pushed off a cliff, though.

It’s more than enough to make me extremely excited for Rooyen’s upcoming Finnish magic school book, , which I literally cannot wait for. !!!

Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson
Representation: Black MCs, Indian MC, Indigenous American secondary character
Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy
ISBN: 125017533X
Goodreads

The dangerous magic of The Night Circus meets the powerful historical exploration of The Underground Railroad in this timely and unsettling novel, set against the darkly glamorous backdrop of New York City at the dawn of WWII.

Amidst the whir of city life, a girl from Harlem is drawn into the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she’s hired to use her knives to strike fear amongst its most dangerous denizens.

But the ghosts from her past are always by her side—and history has appeared on her doorstep to threaten the people she loves most.

Can one woman ever sacrifice enough to save an entire community?

Trouble the Saints is a dazzling, daring novel—a magical love story, a compelling chronicle of interracial tension, and an altogether brilliant and deeply American saga.

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I CAN SEE WHY THIS WON THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD. I mean. Freaking wow. I’ve loved Johnson’s books in the past, so I’m not sure why I took so long to read this one, but once I started I just could not put it down.

I’m not sure it was so much about the story – which if I try to describe, does not sound at all like anything I’d enjoy – as it was Johnson’s writing, which is beautiful and sharp and electric, and her incredibly compelling cast: Phyllis, Dev, and Tamara, each of whom narrate a third of the book, each of whom is a person of colour in an alternate New York where WWII is a tidal wave just about to break.

This is exactly the kind of book I decided to create Sunday Soupçons for, because I have no idea what to say about it beyond it’s freaking amazing! I’m not smart enough to take apart all the incredible things it says and does with and about racial identity and racial trauma, how it weaves spec fic around real issues and events, the questions it asks of its characters and the reader. It’s a love story and a justice story with a very nontraditional, non-standard take on both love and justice, and I tell head-over-heels for every single page.

Three soupçons of three excellent books! Hope you enjoyed!

The post Sunday Soupçons #1 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

More Like Trash Fire: Silk Fire by Zabé Ellor

Silk Fire by Zabé Ellor
Representation: Bisexual MC, F/M/M, queernorm world, secondary trans character
Published on: 5th July 2022
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
ISBN: 1781089760
Goodreads

Set in a planet-sized matriarchal city where magic and technology freely bleed together, a male courtesan’s quest for vengeance against his aristocrat father draws him into an ancient struggle between dragons, necromancers, and his home district’s violent history.

Koré wants to destroy a man.

Koré knew that meddling in politics could end badly, particularly when trying to sabotage his aristocratic father’s campaign before it destroys the city he has come to love. And when a chance encounter with a dying god imbues him with magic-breathing powers, it gets worse: he suddenly becomes a commodity – and a political player.

But the corruption in his city runs deeper than just one man, and an ally's betrayal unleashes an army of the dead on his home street. Koré must trust the world with his deepest secret to stand beside the woman and man he's finally let himself love, as only the bright truth of dragon's fire can break the iron fist of a necromancer's hold.

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 started a book blog because it felt like I was the only one who liked the books I liked, but that couldn’t be true, and I wanted other readers with my ridiculously-niche tastes to have somewhere they could look to for recs. I review books because I want to hype the hell out of under-the-radar gems and uniquely weird queer SFF and authors that I think everyone ought to be reading. I review books because I wanted and needed somewhere to talk about all my book!Feels that didn’t take up anyone else’s space.

I don’t like writing negative reviews. I hate it. It gives me so much anxiety. I would much rather quietly put a book away and never talk about it than publicly say I hated it. I have literally spent weeks agonising over this review, writing and rewriting it, trying to hit the balance between being honest and being cruel, being genuine and writing from a more detached, formal place of mind. I don’t know what the right note is, here, so I’m just going to do my best.

Overview

Silk Fire is an objectively bad book. Objectively. Not because I didn’t like it, but because it is seriously, genuinely, bad. It’s an absolutely stunning premise, but dear gods, this was not ready for publication. I honestly can’t believe it’s being published as-is. It reads like a Nanonovel – the book you write just to get it all down on paper; the book you then have to rewrite half a dozen times before it’s anywhere close to done. Except this didn’t get all the rewriting it needed.

Someone should have sent Silk Fire back to the drawing board. Someone should have said ‘go write this again.’ If it had been me, I would have said ‘put it down, set it aside, and come back to it in five years. Write other stories, other books, practice-practice-practice, get better, because this deserves to be as amazing as it clearly is in your head, and right now you’re not experienced enough to pull it off.’

I sympathise. If I had a book idea this cool, I’m sure it would be an immense struggle to hold back and wait before sharing it with the world. I know how exhausting it is to rewrite the same book over and over. Part of me doesn’t blame Ellor for not wanting to wait, for not wanting to go through the endless cycle of rewriting and editing and rewriting again.

The rest of me does, though. Because I’m heartbroken that this isn’t the book it could have been; because I’m angry that anyone would have an idea this good and not do it justice. There’s the skeleton of something really, truly amazing here! But it’s lost in the utterly terrible execution. I can see what Ellor was trying to do, trying to make, but honestly? He’s not a good enough writer to pull it off, and he’s not good enough to see that he didn’t pull it off, which is…a whole ‘nother level of not-good.

The Worldbuilding

Koré’s world is a matriarchal, planet-sized city, divided up into territories that each have their own government. (One of these territories has been cut off from the rest by some kind of shield/boundary for the last 10,000 years.) Dinosaurs pull hovercraft-vehicles like horses would draw carriages in another setting. There used to be gods, but the gods are dead. Everyone has essence, a kind of lifeforce-energy that can be given involuntarily during sex, or willingly ceded to another person. The more essence you have, the prettier, stronger, and healthier you are, and the redder your eyes become.

Let’s start with the matriarchy, which was one of the (many) aspects of Silk Fire that I was most excited about. I was excited to see what Ellor would do with it – I’ve seen plenty of fictional matriarchies, but I never get tired of them. …Except this one: this one I was tired of after two chapters. Because Ellor didn’t bother to put any thought into it at all; Silk Fire just takes our world’s patriarchy – at its most obnoxious and gross, at that – and just switches men and women around. Men are now the ones considered too emotional to be trusted with complex thinking, the ones who should be home raising the children, the ones who can be spouses or sex-objects and nothing else, the ones who are weak. Women are now aggressive, patronising, abusive, and quick to grope any pretty young thing they fancy.

“It’s not that rare. We even have a male magistrate now. Vashathke of Victory Street.”

“You sound like you hate him.” She laughed. “Men! Put two in a locked room and they’ll scratch each other bloody. Women were built to talk, plan, and work together.”

There’s no nuance, and there’s no common sense – a world where women have power and men don’t would suck just as much as one in which men have power and women don’t, but those two worlds should suck in different ways. As an off-the-cuff example: most men are physically stronger than most women, so in a matriarchy, why not present a culture that de-values tasks that require physical strength? Why not have a world that values child-raising more than it does anything to do with the military, with violence and aggression? In the Crown of Stars series by Kate Elliott, women are supposed to care for hearth and home – and that is translated as them being the heads of the families, the ones who control property, the ones with all the power while men get sent out to fight battles sometimes. That’s a thoughtful, interesting take on a matriarchy, and it’s far from the only one. But just turning women into our world’s worst stereotypes of men? It’s boring, and it’s lazy, and it’s been done. You’re neither saying nor accomplishing anything new.

(You can read quite a good conversation about worldbuilding for matriarchies/non-patriarchies here.)

There’s also the fact that, despite this deeply, deeply misandrist culture, the main character’s father is in the running to be the next sort-of-president. This is neither properly explained (how did he manage it?) nor ever presented as a win for the subjugated men. It’s only relevant because Koré is devoted to keeping it from happening.

(And in this heavy-handed matriarchal culture…two men, Koré and his dad, end up in positions of major power. Like, even in fiction, even in a fictional matriarchy, men still come out on top. It feels like a slap in the face. Can you just not? Are women allowed to win ever? Go away.)

Moving on: literally nothing – nothing – is ever visually described. I had no idea what anything looked like. Clothes? Buildings? Food? The hovercrafts and the dinosaurs? No clue. Nor is any of it ever really explained – it’s not cohesive, it doesn’t fit together. It reads like Ellor was afraid of info-dumping the reader, and so went too far the other way and didn’t tell us anything. Every now and then someone will make a reference to some long-dead god or a person we’ve never heard of before, but because we don’t get any real worldbuilding, no context, none of it means anything. I have no problem whatsoever with an author throwing everything they love AND the kitchen sink too into the mix – but none of it does mix. It’s oil and water and so many gaping worldbuilding-holes. For crying out loud, we literally know nothing about the district Koré lives in except the one street he lives on. And even that, we have no idea how to picture!

And all of this – this world, this culture, this form of governance – has supposedly gone on uninterrupted and unchanged for ten thousand years. That – no. That just doesn’t work. Ten thousand years is longer than the stretch of time between now and back when humans invented agriculture. And you want me to believe in a world that’s gone that long without changing at all? That’s going further than any amount of suspending disbelief can take me.

(It is mentioned that people with a lot of essence can live to be about 200, but that’s not enough to account for ten thousand years of stagnation. Let’s pretend everyone in Silk Fire lives to be 200 – which they absolutely do not, that kind of lifespan is only for the 1%. But let’s pretend.

10,000 divided by 200 is fifty generations. Fifty generations in our world takes you back to the Fall of Rome; do our languages and beliefs and practices look anything like they did back then? No, because of course they don’t. Fifty generations produces a tonne of cultural change. Silk Fire‘s handwaved lack of history is lazy and makes no sense.)

Plus, the closed-off territory I mentioned? Near the start of the book, the walls come down and they’re able to rejoin the rest of the world…with virtually no fanfare and no difficulty whatsoever. And this is only relevant at all because Koré immediately starts plotting ways to get their votes so they don’t vote for his dad. It’s not this big miraculous, world-changing event, the way it really ought to be.

The Cast

Koré’s defining characteristic is that he thinks he’s a monster. I have no idea why, but he says it at least once every few pages. Over and over and over again, with no explanation, and no evidence to back it up. It goes far past the point of just being annoying, but it seems to be his only real personality trait. He’s certainly not the political mastermind he’s presented as, nor nearly as calculating; when he’s given a literally world-changing gift from a dead god, he just…ignores it. He doesn’t start working out a way to utilise this gift to leverage the votes he wants out of the right people; he doesn’t even try to figure out what’s happening to him or what he can do now. Even when he starts manifesting scales – when he starts manifesting WINGS – he just…keeps ignoring it. Vaguely hoping it will go away.

Corrosive anger festered inside me. It doesn’t matter. I won’t let the scales appear again. I pushed the truth—I don’t know how to stop them—into the pit of my stomach. I had work to do.

…Please explain to me how someone ignores the fact that they’re turning into a dragon? Or why this wouldn’t be a major driving force of the character and the story, rather than something incidental, which is how it’s presented? Never mind that the mc is turning into a dragon, there are – things. To do. Somewhere. Probably.

The love interests had some appeal, but I never felt any chemistry between the three, and didn’t buy into the ship at all. All three – and all the rest of the cast, for that matter – are mostly defined by one or two personality traits, rather than feeling like fully fleshed-out characters. There’s a tiny bit of character growth, especially for the female love interest, but as a polyamorous person who was super hyped to be getting poly epic fantasy? This was a major let-down.

The Plot

The plot is basically, Koré’s dad is up for election, and Koré is going to do everything in his power to make sure his dad doesn’t win. Except acknowledge, explore, or leverage the fact that he, Koré, is turning into a dragon. Because that’s not relevant or important.

I think Silk Fire might have worked better if it had been split into two books – that might have given the plot room to breathe. As it is, it moves at a break-neck pace, and that would be fine, except that the book also tries to have all these deeply emotional moments – personal revelations, attacks on Koré’s brothel, confrontations with the bad guys – and doesn’t give either the characters or the reader a chance to take in and process those moments. Which makes those moments fall very, very flat, and leeches away impact from any other aspect of the plot, because how can we be invested if we’re not emotionally engaged? And how can we be emotionally engaged when you’re rushing us past every moment of emotion?

Slowing down the pace would have helped enormously, not just in giving the book more room to work our emotions, but also allowing more space for worldbuilding and historical and cultural context to be woven in. And hopefully it would make the plot easier to follow, because honestly? It’s so hard – damn near impossible – to keep track of what’s going on. It’s too fast and there’s too many 180s and reveals and drunken twists. I hate plots that are just, a-b-c, so obvious and predictable that there’s no point in reading the book at all – but Silk Fire goes way too far in the other direction.

And, I mentioned this in the section on Worldbuilding – but it’s hard for me to buy into the whole Precious Boy thing. A man winning power in a matriarchy doesn’t read well – at least here, in the hands of this author – given that…men are always winning power in the real world as well. So it doesn’t really feel different or unique. If anything, I ended up resenting the whole set-up – men win even in a matriarchy! Yay! Not. (And it’s complicated, because it’s a bad matriarchy that should be challenged and changed if not outright overthrown – and yet. It still feels like girls don’t get to win even in a world where they rule.)

The Prose

This is not a book with lyrical prose. It is a book with prose that tries to be lyrical. Occasional sentences are lovely, but they’re often poorly placed – jarring the flow of a paragraph, or turning a piece of dialogue into something that sounds insincere and cringeworthy – and the rest of the time, you get similes that don’t quite work.

Blood pounded in my ears, foolish and heavy as a down comforter.

…blood that’s like a blanket?

A big part of the problem is the same as with the plot: pacing. The writing runs so fast that lines that could be lyrical crash into each other, aren’t given the space they need to shine. If the pacing were slowed down, we’d get that space, and prose that would be something very close to beautiful.

Dialogue

“So many people have treated me vilely. My very bones grow suspicious when others draw close.”

Silk Fire‘s dialogue frustrated me no end. It switches from heavily poetic, almost purple-prose-y, to blunt in a way that isn’t clearly code-switching. Much worse was the way conversations jumped around – more than once I wondered if my ARC was missing paragraphs, because the speakers went from talking about one topic to a completely different one with no transition. Despite the book being written in first-person, I couldn’t keep track of how the MC was thinking, why his thoughts and speech – and everyone else’s – zig-zagged the way they did.

Zega flushed rosé-wine pink. “What are you doing here?”

I couldn’t remember. “Let Opal go. Now.” I jabbed the sparking, electric shiki end of the weapon toward him.

He rolled his eyes at my threat. “You’re making skyscrapers from street shit. Opal brought this on himself. He’s no good in bed. He cried when I struck him with the shiki. You would have begged for its kiss.”

“You would have made me beg. You taught me love meant suffering for you.” Acid boiled in my throat. “You killed love for me.”

“As my marriage tore my heart to tatters. You left me alone with my wife. It’s all your fault. At least, when I fuck like this, I feel free of her.”

“So freedom means someone else suffers? This is wrong.”

It just doesn’t sound like real people talking. It reads like a script, a bad one – it rings false, like when you hear a song played out of tune.

(Also: skyscrapers from street shit doesn’t quite work as an idiom, imo. Mountains out of mole hills works because mole hills look like tiny mountains – scale one up, and voila, a mountain(-shaped thing)! You…can’t scale up street shit into a skyscraper. The alliteration is nice, but the imagery doesn’t work.)

Believable, naturally-flowing dialogue can be really difficult in an epic fantasy setting, or any setting that is vastly different from our world; you may have to teach the reader how people in this setting speak, and get them used to it. Epic fantasy dialogue often doesn’t sound very similar to how I talk with my friends, or with my co-workers, or any other kind of conversation I’m used to. That means an adjustment. But Silk Fire doesn’t read as if the people in it have a coherent conversational style; one minute super formal or highly poetic, the next very casual, and often with the same person. It would make sense to be super formal with people higher up the social food-chain with you, and casual with your own circle, but Silk Fire‘s not that structured. It’s random, jumping from one to the other and back again, which makes it teeth-grindingly uncomfortable to read. Gah!

Sex Scenes

The sex scenes are a bad joke. For a book whose premise was allegedly ‘what if Sanderson wrote Kushiel’s Dart?’ (which: why would anyone want that), the sex reads closer to EL James. (Not as bad as James. But a lot closer to James than either Brandon Sanderson or Jacqueline Carey!)

You cannot have your MC refer to his arse, mid-sex scene (or preferably ever), as ‘my lower opening’ and expect me not to cringe. Nor can you write anal sex without lube! Okay, the man who did the penetrating is called a dick for not using lube. Thank you for acknowledging that it’s not fun for the person being penetrated (the MC). But that’s not really enough. Even if you’re not the one being penetrated, anal without lube (OR PREP) is not fun! Chafing is a thing! A deeply unpleasant thing! For both parties!

The only scenario I can come up with where someone might go for anal without lube-and-prep is rape, at which point it’s not about sex, it’s about power, so presumably the chafing is an acceptable trade-off for the rapist. But it wasn’t a rape scene. Which makes it wholly unbelievable, and really bad, and just – come on.

Don’t write a book about sex-work if you can’t write about sex like an adult.

In Conclusion

I’ve been looking forward to this book for years, ever since the publication deal was announced – but Silk Fire doesn’t live up to any of its promises, and that is heartbreaking. It tries to be too much and do too much, and thus can’t sustain itself.

It could have been – almost was – amazing. Instead, it’s my biggest reading-disappointment in years, and I don’t recommend it for anyone.

The post More Like Trash Fire: Silk Fire by Zabé Ellor appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

I Can’t Wait For…The Unbalancing by R.B. Lemberg

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 is The Unbalancing by R.B. Lemberg!

The Unbalancing by R.B. Lemberg
Representation: Queer MCs, queernorm world
Published on: 20th September 2022
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads

In this first full-length novel from the acclaimed Birdverse, new love blossoms between an impatient starkeeper and a reclusive poet as they try together to save their island home. Nebula, Locus, and Ignyte finalist R. B. Lemberg (The Four Profound Weaves) has crafted a gorgeous tale of the inevitable transformations of communities and their worlds. The Unbalancing is rooted in the mystical cosmology, neurodiversity, and queerness that infuses Lemberg’s lyrical prose, which has invited glowing comparisons to N. K. Jemisin, Patricia A. McKillip, and Ursula K. LeGuin.

Beneath the waters by the islands of Gelle-Geu, a star sleeps restlessly. The celebrated new starkeeper Ranra Kekeri, who is preoccupied by the increasing tremors, confronts the problems left behind by her predecessor.

Meanwhile, the poet Erígra Lilún, who merely wants to be left alone, is repeatedly asked by their ancestor Semberi to take over the starkeeping helm. Semberi insists upon telling Lilun mysterious tales of the deliverance of the stars by the goddess Bird.

When Ranra and Lilun meet, sparks begin to fly. An unforeseen configuration of their magical deepnames illuminates the trouble under the tides. For Ranra and Lilun, their story is just beginning; for the people of Gelle-Geu, it may well be too late to save their home.

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Lemberg’s Birdverse is an absolutely beautiful world that has already been the setting of multiple short stories and a novella (The Four Profound Weaves, released to much acclaim in 2020). I’ve adored every one of the short stories, and enjoyed the novella, and I am BEYOND EXCITED that we’re going to get a whole novel of Lemberg’s wonderful prose and breathtaking worldbuilding!!!

And just look at that synopsis! Poets! Ancestors! Islands! (I don’t know why islands and archipelagos enchant me so much, but they do.) And STARKEEPERS! I don’t know exactly what a starkeeper is (yet), but I know that just the sound of it fills me with a sense of wonder. That’s not unusual with Lemberg’s work – there’s always something, in every piece of their writing, that takes my breath away – but this feels extra-special. My not-so-inner-child just LIGHTS UP at the idea of starkeepers!!!

Knowing a decent bit about deepnames and the goddess Bird from Lemberg’s other works in this universe just makes me VERY FLAILY at what the description tells us. Bird delivering stars??? The deepnames of two people forming a configuration??? HI I HAVE QUESTIONS AND MY BIGGEST ONE IS HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO WAIT UNTIL SEPTEMEBER FOR THIS?!

I guess I’ll just have to reread the other Birdverse stories. WHAT SUFFERING. But for real: if you haven’t read the Birdverse yet, you have until September to make yourself familiar with it, and if you have read it, you can, like me, preorder The Unbalancing from the publisher here!

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In Short: February

I have been an EXTREMELY busy bee this month!

Read

15 books this month is…pretty bad for me. Especially given that five of them are novellas. I just couldn’t focus on anything this month, which made reading a real struggle. But the books I did read were stunning! Dark Breakers, Choir of Lies, and Inheritors of Power were the first-time-read standouts, and it was a joy to reread Radiance and The Last Sun (the latter as part of the #TTSReadalong I and the rest of the TTSPromo team are running on Goodreads and Twitter).

The Body Keeps the Score is the first non-fiction book I’ve read in a while; I read it on the recommendation of my new therapist. I started it months ago; it’s not a quick, easy read, but reading it was like getting my autism diagnosis – it made sense of a lot of things, and that felt like relief.

This month, 26.67% of the books I read were by BIPOC authors. That’s down from January’s 35%, but it’s not terrible.

Reviewed[image error]

Five full reviews this month! And I’m pretty pleased with how all of them turned out. (It can be agonising trying to write a review worthy of an amazing books, and there was a lot of that this month!)

DNF-ed

I wrote DNF reviews for these too, most of them quite short. I sweat and bled over my thoughts on Silk Fire, though, and I have a ‘real’ review for it almost finished. The TL;DR version is that it’s a trainwreck. The other books weren’t bad, though, it was more a case of my not being the right reader for them.

ARCs Received

A GREAT DEAL OF DELIGHTED SHRIEKING THIS MONTH! Almost all of these are on my Unmissable SFF of 2022 list, so being approved for ARCs of them was extremely exciting!

The Stardust Thief I unfortunately had to DNF, and I finished reading Nettle & Bone just this morning (fear not, a review is forthcoming). I was really touched that Queen of Swords Press reached out to offer me a copy of The Language of Roses after I featured it in my Can’t Wait For post last week – I doubt I’ll ever stop feeling flattered and flaily when I’m offered an ARC; it’s an even bigger deal than having a request for one be approved!

Ordinary Monsters and The Ballad of Perilous Graves are both gambles – I don’t know the authors, have no strong feelings about the publishers, and I wasn’t able to find excerpts of the books online – but after dipping into them both, I’m pretty sure they’re gambles that are going to pay off…

ARCs Outstanding[image error][image error]

Not gonna lie, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed! But also incredibly excited for each and every one of these! Several I’m currently reading – though I continue to have to read Saint Death’s Daughter in sips, because it is so exquisite and gorgeous and wonderful that it’s almost overwhelming. IN THE BEST WAY.

The Hourglass Throne I’ve already read, but I’m going to need to reread it at least once more time before trying to put my thoughts down in any kind of coherent way.

Rec Lists & Misc

This month marked the beginning of the Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards, which I was invited to join as a judge this year! I’ve managed to gather together almost all of the books I have to read for the categories I’m judging, but I’m waaaay behind on actually reading them. I’m considering cashing in some of my vacation days at work so I can just spend a week doing nothing but read…

I made quite a few changes to my Unmissable SFF of 2022 list; editing pub dates as some books were pushed back, adding covers as they were revealed by the publishers, adding new books that I only just heard of (like Mary McMyne’s The Book of Gothel and Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco, among others), and crossing some off (like Silk Fire by Zabe Ellor, with prejudice). As of this post my Unmissable list is 98 books long!

I’ve also been hard at work running the TTSPromo Twitter account – as part of the hype campaign for The Hourglass Throne by K.D. Edwards – and arranging the promo tour for the same. The TTSPromo team is freaking incredible, and I’ve been so impressed by all the people who signed up for the promo tour. That starts next month, and I can’t wait to see everyone’s posts!

Looking Forward

The 1st of March is my birthday – I’ll be 29 years old! – and there’s a ton of books I’m excited for. (I don’t know why, but my birthday month tends to be packed with awesome SFF every year. I’M NOT COMPLAINING!) From Dust, A Flame is Podos’ first fantasy novel since The Wise and the Wicked, which is the book that made me her fan for life; The Bone Orchard is a lush political fantasy with necromancy and comps to Jacqueline Carey; we’re getting a NEW MCLEMORE BOOK, which will obviously be epic; and I’ve fallen head first into the hype for The Shadow Glass. And there are so many more!

MARCH IS GONNA BE A GREAT BOOK-MONTH!

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