Siavahda's Blog, page 80
September 26, 2021
Heartfelt Magical Fun: Payback’s a Witch by Lana Harper
Payback's a Witch by Lana Harper Representation: Bi/pansexual MC, bi/pansexual love interest, F/F
Published on: 5th October 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
ISBN: 0593336062
Goodreads
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina meets The L Word in this fresh, sizzling rom-com by Lana Harper.
Emmy Harlow is a witch but not a very powerful one—in part because she hasn't been home to the magical town of Thistle Grove in years. Her self-imposed exile has a lot to do with a complicated family history and a desire to forge her own way in the world, and only the very tiniest bit to do with Gareth Blackmoore, heir to the most powerful magical family in town and casual breaker of hearts and destroyer of dreams.
But when a spellcasting tournament that her family serves as arbiters for approaches, it turns out the pull of tradition (or the truly impressive parental guilt trip that comes with it) is strong enough to bring Emmy back. She's determined to do her familial duty; spend some quality time with her best friend, Linden Thorn; and get back to her real life in Chicago.
On her first night home, Emmy runs into Talia Avramov—an all-around badass adept in the darker magical arts—who is fresh off a bad breakup . . . with Gareth Blackmoore. Talia had let herself be charmed, only to discover that Gareth was also seeing Linden—unbeknownst to either of them. And now she and Linden want revenge. Only one question stands: Is Emmy in?
But most concerning of all: Why can't she stop thinking about the terrifyingly competent, devastatingly gorgeous, wickedly charming Talia Avramov?
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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~real witches working for a witchy subscription box company
~sushi is sexy, sorry I don’t make the rules
~home is complicated
~one star for the astrology app
Not only am I a sucker for the kind of delightfully groan-worthy wordplay we get in the title, I’m also a huge fan of Harper’s YA books, written under the name Lana Popović. So when I heard she was writing an Adult fantasy – and that it was super queer! – I POUNCED.
And I was not disappointed in the slightest.
Emmy is from a family of weak witches – so weak that they don’t even get to compete in the every-50-years-tournament to determine which magical family gets the biggest slice of the magical cake for the next half-century. Instead, the Harlows are supposed to arbitrate, enforcing the rules and declaring the winner, while knowing that they’re never going to be the ones to wear the crown. It’s a seriously miserable set-up – I’m not sure I’d want to be a witch, part of the magical world, able to see and experience all the wonders of it…but not able to actually do magic myself. Emmy can light a candle or keep her hot chocolate hot, and that’s about it – and it’s not nothing! But when your fellow witches can do things like animate trees (the Thorn family) or summon the spirits of the dead (the Avramovs) or transmute matter (the gods’ damn Blackmoores)… That’s going to ache.
Maybe it would be better not to have magic at all, and nine years ago, that’s more or less what Emmy decided – she left Thistle Grove to go to college and has barely been back since, which means that her magic (which is tied to her hometown) has faded away to nothing. But on the other hand, she has a job she loves and gets to live in a big city, which has all kinds of things a teeny tiny town like Thistle Grove does not. And she gets to live in a world where her worth is defined by her skills and abilities as a human being – not her lack of them as a witch.
But she does come back to play Arbiter for this generation’s magical tournament – mostly because of some (I think unintentional?) emotional blackmail. And when she does, she discovers that the dickhead who broke her heart and her self-worth, Gareth – the catalyst for her leaving Thistle Grove – has also screwed with her best friend, Linden, in her absence. And with Talia, the terrifyingly wonderful scion of the town’s borderline-dark-magic witch family.
So the three of them hatch a plot to take him down.
Except it’s actually more complicated than that. Gareth is another witch, the scion of the Blackmoore witch family who keep winning the tournament and therefore have had more power than anyone else for centuries. And he’s a dick. But there’s more at stake than some broken hearts and hurt pride; the Blackmoores have been throwing their weight around, and now they’re – deliberately or not – crushing the stores and other businesses of the other families. They need someone else to win the tournament, to try and restore some balance to all this, and keep the other families from going under.
And still, Emmy, Linden and Talia accept the fact that they probably can’t outright defeat Gareth. He’s just too strong a witch. But damn it, they’re still going to try, and maybe they can at least leave him with some egg on his face.
I went into this book expecting it, but the first thing that struck me about Payback’s a Witch when I started reading was the beautiful descriptions. The gorgeously descriptive prose that is her signature as Popović is on full display here in her first novel as Harper, and I mention this not just because pretty prose is my Thing, but because Harper is one of the only authors I know who manages to pull off descriptive prose and first-person narration. Usually it sounds weird if your main character is going around speaking poetry as they describe the scene, but Harper makes it work, and she makes it work so well. It’s a careful balance – too much, and the first-person narration no longer sounds like a real human being speaking, but too little and the prose gets too plain – but Harper nails it, and I’m so happy because not only is it lovely to read, it also adds another layer of depth to Emmy. Harper uses the extra-pretty descriptions to underline Emmy’s love for her home of Thistle Grove, all the things she’s missed, everything that is genuinely special and magical about the town and its inhabitants. It means that we, the reader, are fully aware that Emmy’s not sure she wants to leave again long before she admits it to herself. It’s a really clever bit of showing-not-telling!
Besides, you really can’t blame Emmy for waxing a bit poetic – Parker has created the most enchanting possible setting in Thistle Grove. Honestly, this is as much a love story between Emmy and her hometown as it is a love story about Emmy and Talia – and I can promise you’ll be rooting for both romances!
Above Hallows Hill, the unlikely little mountain the town huddled up against, a crescent moon hung like a freshly whetted sickle. Waning crescent, my witch brain whispered, already churning up the spells best cast in this phase. Its silhouette looked like it could carve glass, impossibly perfect and precise, the kind of moon you’d see in a dream. The constellations that surrounded it like a milky spill of jewels were arranged the same as on the other side of the town line but better somehow, more intentional, clear-cut and brilliant as a mosaic set with precious gems. So enticing that they made me want to pull the car over and tumble out, head hinged back and jaw agape, just to watch them glitter.
This fucking town. Always so damn extra.
But we like extra in our magical towns, Emmy!
The second thing that struck me wasn’t so much the characters themselves – although they’re fabulous – as it was the way they interact. I don’t know how to phrase it: I want to say, all the characters act and treat each other like real, mature adults. There’s no contrived, manufactured drama; the characters are open and honest with each other, and treat each other with refreshing respect. Drama and angst come from actual issues, not people keeping secrets they shouldn’t or not being truthful. One of my favourite examples of this was when Emmy and her mother finally talk about why Emmy left Thistle Grove; it’s not an easy conversation for either of them, but it’s a necessary one, and one where they both respect the other’s perspective and own up to their mistakes, or to what they could have done better.
And I just feel like we don’t get that kind of character interaction very often, where everyone involved is a gods’ damn grown-up and acts like it. Of course there are still upsets and drama, but no one’s acting like an idiot child about it (well, except Gareth, but we’re not counting him). The character dynamics are just so healthy, and Parker proves that you can have that without it making a boring story. I love it!
My horoscope app had not seen fit to warn me of this incoming emotional reckoning–one star.
Speaking of, the story itself is a really great combination of action, romance, and soft, quieter moments of introspection or relationship development; the kind of indulgent slice-of-life scenes that get cut from most stories because they’re not cinematic. Parker doesn’t go too heavy on the worldbuilding, and while normally I love super-intricate, detailed worldbuilding, the simplicity of it here suits the tone of the book. Payback’s a Witch is not brainless, but it’s still fun – not the kind of fantasy that demands a lot of hard work from the reader, but still with more thoughtfulness and meat to it than your typical beach read. Not that you couldn’t take Payback with you to the beach – in fact it’s hard to think of a situation where this book wouldn’t fit. Cosy curl-up read? Check. Something to read on the plane or bus? Perf. Need a distraction when you’re feeling low or in pain? Stress-tested and passed with flying broomsticks colors!
Payback’s a Witch is a book with so much heart. It’s about heritage and home and defining who you are; it’s about figuring out what matters most to you, what’s important enough to hold on to and what you should let go. It’s about looking your choices – and the reasons you made them – right in the face; it’s about being honest with yourself and the people you love. It’s about all kinds of love and how much they all matter; familial, friendship, romance.
Talia; the twisty paradox of her, like some captivating Gordion knot I was still struggling to comprehend. The ferocious girl who growled at pumpkin fiends as she stalked her way into battle, and also baked babkas to show people she loved how much she cared. The girl who embraced darkness, tended and cared for the phantoms who lived within it, while shedding such a scintillating light that it was damn near impossible to look away from her.
And if it needs specific mentioning? The romance is just yummy. I’d like to be more eloquent, but honestly, that really is the perfect word for it. Talia brings the bad-girl vibes to the table, then surprises us with her soft streak, and even I, who usually skip right over sex scenes, have to admit that these ones sizzle. Emmy and Talia have delicious chemistry, but I also appreciated how the sex and love aren’t interchangeable here; the romantic component of their relationship develops more slowly, and there’s no nonsense about them being each other’s One True Love after a few searing sexcapades. It’s going to make real work, and they know that. Like I said above: everyone’s a grown-up here.
Which is not to say there’s no butterflies in Emmy’s stomach.
“Oh, do get a grip, Harlow,” I muttered to myself, as I wriggled into yet another pair of pants. “You’re getting sushi, not eloping with her into the underworld.”
Characters who talk, act and feel like real people; chocolate-dipped romance; and a magical tournament. What more could you possibly ask for from a witchy October read?
It should tell you plenty that having gotten to read this book early, I’ve already preordered the sequel. You should definitely nab a copy of Payback when it comes out on the 5th!
The post Heartfelt Magical Fun: Payback’s a Witch by Lana Harper appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 22, 2021
I Can’t Wait For…The Bone Orchard by Sara A. Mueller
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 Bone Orchard by Sara A. Mueller!
The Bone Orchard by Sara A. Mueller Published on: 22nd March 2022
Genres: Fantasy, High Fantasy
Goodreads
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Sara A. Mueller's The Bone Orchard is a fascinating whodunit set in a lush, gothic world of secrets and magic--where a dying emperor charges his favorite concubine with solving his own murder, and preventing the culprit, which undoubtedly is one of his three terrible sons, from taking control of an empire.
Charm is a witch, and she is alone. The last of a line of conquered necromantic workers, now confined within the yard of regrown bone trees at Orchard House, and the secrets of their marrow.
Charm is a prisoner, and a survivor. Charm tends the trees and their clattering fruit for the sake of her children, painstakingly grown and regrown with its fruit: Shame, Justice, Desire, Pride, and Pain.
Charm is a whore, and a madam. The wealthy and powerful of Borenguard come to her house to buy time with the girls who aren't real.
Except on Tuesdays, which is when the Emperor himself lays claim to his mistress, Charm herself.
But now--Charm is also the only person who can keep an empire together, as the Emperor summons her to his deathbed, and charges her with choosing which of his awful, faithless sons will carry on the empire---by discovering which one is responsible for his own murder.
If she does this last thing, she will finally have what has been denied her since the fall of Inshil — her freedom. But she will also be betraying the ghosts past and present that live on within her heart.
Charm must choose. Her dead Emperor’s will or the whispers of her own ghosts. Justice for the empire or her own revenge.
I stumbled across this while browsing Goodreads at some point, and I just love how completely out-there the entire premise is! Sex work and necromancy and the murder victim asking you to investigate the murder! (I know that last one’s been done before, but I’ve rarely seen it done when the victim hasn’t quite died yet, and that’s definitely my favourite take.) And it sounds like there’ll be all sorts of complicated feels about colonisation and empire-building, which are always very yummy.
To seal the deal, The Bone Orchard is getting comped to Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel Universe, giving me Very Intense Hopes of lush prose and decadent storytelling – which as we know, are my very favourite things!
So yes, I’ve preordered it already. WHY HAVEN’T YOU???
The post I Can’t Wait For…The Bone Orchard by Sara A. Mueller appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 21, 2021
10 Books to Fall For
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!
Today’s theme is Books on My Fall 2021 To-read List. I’ve lived in several countries that defined Fall differently, so for the purposes of this post I’m working with the Fall = Sept+Oct+Nov model. Also, some of the books that should be on this list aren’t, because I’ve already read ARCs of them, like Summer Sons and The Last Graduate (click the titles to read my reviews), but they should still be on your Fall tbr!!!
Now with all that said: my list!
The Not-Yet-Released
The Bone Ship's Wake (The Tide Child, #3) by R.J. Barker Representation: Achillean MC, minor nonbinary character, queernorm world
Published on: 28th September 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads
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Discover a brilliantly imagined epic fantasy of honor, glory, and warfare in this action-packed conclusion to the David Gemmell Award-nominated trilogy.
Joron Twiner's dreams of freedom lay shattered. His Shipwife is gone and all he has left is revenge. Leading the black fleet from the deck of Tide Child, he takes every opportunity to hurt the Hundred Isles he is given. But his time is limited.
His fleet is shrinking, the Keyshan's Rot is running through his body, and he hiding from a prophecy that says he and the avian sorcerer, the Windseer will end the entire world.
But the Sea Dragons have returned, a miracle in itself, and who is to say that if you can have one miracle, there cannot be another?
I haven’t reviewed the first two books of this trilogy because frankly, I have no idea how to put that much awesome into words. But I am very much dying to get my hands on the last book – even if I desperately don’t want the story to be over!
A Spindle Splintered (Fractured Fables, #1) by Alix E. Harrow Representation: Queer MC, secondary F/F
Published on: 5th October 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Portal Fantasy
Goodreads
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USA Today bestselling author Alix E. Harrow's A Spindle Splintered brings her patented charm to a new version of a classic story.
It's Zinnia Gray's twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it's the last birthday she'll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no one has lived past twenty-one.
Her best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia's last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate.
The Ten Thousand Doors of January and Once and Future Witches are both among my all-time faves, so of course I’m pouncing on Harrow’s next work! I still remember when the pitch went public as Sleeping Beauty meets the Spiderverse and I have not grown any less excited since that time!
Comfort Me With Apples by Catherynne M. Valente Published on: 26th October 2021
Goodreads
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A terrifying new thriller from bestseller Catherynne M. Valente, for fans of Gone Girl and Spinning Silver
Sophia was made for him. Her perfect husband. She can feel it in her bones. He is perfect. Their home together in Arcadia Gardens is perfect. Everything is perfect.
It's just that he's away so much. So often. He works so hard. She misses him. And he misses her. He says he does, so it must be true. He is the perfect husband and everything is perfect.
But sometimes Sophia wonders about things. Strange things. Dark things. The look on her husband's face when he comes back from a long business trip. The questions he will not answer. The locked basement she is never allowed to enter. And whenever she asks the neighbors, they can't quite meet her gaze...
But everything is perfect. Isn't it?
Does this sound like something I’d normally pick up? No. Am I going to read it anyway? Hells yes. It’s Catherynne Valente, I will read anything and everything she writes and I will enjoy it.
A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding, #1) by Freya Marske Representation: M/M
Published on: 2nd November 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads
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Robin Blyth has more than enough bother in his life. He's struggling to be a good older brother, a responsible employer, and the harried baronet of a seat gutted by his late parents' excesses. When an administrative mistake sees him named the civil service liaison to a hidden magical society, he discovers what's been operating beneath the unextraordinary reality he's always known.
Now Robin must contend with the beauty and danger of magic, an excruciating deadly curse, and the alarming visions of the future that come with it--not to mention Edwin Courcey, his cold and prickly counterpart in the magical bureaucracy, who clearly wishes Robin were anyone and anywhere else.
Robin's predecessor has disappeared, and the mystery of what happened to him reveals unsettling truths about the very oldest stories they've been told about the land they live on and what binds it. Thrown together and facing unexpected dangers, Robin and Edwin discover a plot that threatens every magician in the British Isles--and a secret that more than one person has already died to keep.
I mostly distrust much-hyped books, but many trustworthy sources have assured me this is going to be epically wonderful, and now I’m impatient for it to get on my e-reader already!
The Bone Shard Emperor (The Drowning Empire, #2) by Andrea Stewart Representation: Queernorm world, sapphic MC
Published on: 11th November 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads
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The Bone Shard Emperor is the unmissable sequel to The Bone Shard Daughter, one of the biggest fantasy debuts of 2020 - a captivating tale of magic, revolution and mystery, where a young woman's sense of identity will make or break an empire.
The Emperor is Dead. Long live the Emperor.
Lin Sukai finally sits on the throne she won at so much cost, but her struggles are only just beginning. Her people don't trust her. Her political alliances are weak. And in the northeast of the Empire, a rebel army of constructs is gathering, its leader determined to take the throne by force.
Yet an even greater threat is on the horizon, for the Alanga - the powerful magicians of legend - have returned to the Empire. They claim they come in peace, and Lin needs their help to defeat the rebels and restore order.
But can she trust them?
I loved The Bone Shard Daughter, and although I have a few tentative guesses about where this trilogy is going, I’m pretty sure Stewart is still going to surprise and delight me!
The Nightland Express by J.M. Lee Representation: Biracial MC, queer rep (specifics unknown)
Published on: 22nd November 2022
Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy
Goodreads
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In antebellum America, two teens bury their secrets and join the historic Pony Express, and soon discover the mortal world is not the only one on the brink of war.
Young, poor, and orphaned in rural Missouri, Jessamine Murphy frets over her very pregnant sister, not at all sure how to feed their family until the baby is born, let alone after. When Jessamine comes across a recruitment poster reading "Pony Express Special Assignment: St. Joseph, Missouri to California. Two riders wanted. Orphans preferred," her tomboy heart skips a beat: not only for the ample risk wage, but for the adventure and the chance to track down their wayward father in California. Jessamine cuts her hair, dons a pair of pants, and steps into the world as Jesse.
At the Pony Express station, Jesse meets Ben Foley, a quiet but determined boy, so secretive about his origin story there is little doubt it must be turbulent, and they become partners. They are an odd pair—one excitedly navigating the world as a boy for the first time, the other a mixed-race young man trying to defend his freedom—yet their esteem for each other grows as they head west across the United States.
As they encounter mysterious portals that carry them miles in an eyeblink and unusual creatures with uncanny glowing eyes, it becomes clear that this is no normal mission. A second, magical realm exists just below the surface of the mortal one, intertwined since the beginning of time—but the divisive violence of colonization and war are tearing the two worlds apart.
As Ben and Jesse struggle to find themselves, they discover their unlikely alliance may be the only thing that will save them . . . and the creatures and environment of two struggling worlds.
Look, years ago now, this brand-new publishing house, Erewhon Press, announced the first four titles they’d acquired – and I was beyond excited for all four of them. The Nightland Express was one of those titles, and I’m overjoyed that I’ll finally be able to read it before much longer!
Dark Breakers by C.S.E. Cooney, Sharon Shinn, Brett Massé Published on: 15th February 2022
Genres: Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy
Goodreads
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NEW FROM WORLD FANTASY AWARD WINNER C. S. E. COONEY
“Welcome to a Gilded Era like you’ve never before known and will never be able to forget. C. S. E. Cooney’s DARK BREAKERS will transfix and transform you, and, should you chance upon its characters in a glittering hallway, you had best be wearing your fanciest moonlight, and be ready to dance. If Titania herself were to commission a book, it would be this one.”—Fran Wilde, two-time Nebula Award-winning author of UPDRAFT and RIVERLAND
A young human painter and an ageless gentry queen fall in love over spilled wine—at the risk of his life and her immortality. Pulled into the Veil Between Worlds, two feuding neighbors (and a living statue) get swept up in a brutal war of succession. An investigative reporter infiltrates the Seafall City Laundries to write the exposé of a lifetime, and uncovers secrets she never believed possible. Returning to an oak grove to scatter her husband’s ashes, an elderly widow meets an otherworldly friend, who offers her a momentous choice. Two gentry queens of the Valwode plot to hijack a human rocketship and steal the moon out of the sky.
DARK BREAKERS gathers three new and two previously uncollected tales from World Fantasy Award-winning writer C. S. E. Cooney that expand on the thrice-enfolded worlds first introduced in her Locus and World Fantasy award-nominated novella DESDEMONA AND THE DEEP. In her introduction to DARK BREAKERS, Crawford Award-winning author Sharon Shinn advises those who pick up this book to “settle in for a fantastical read” full of “vivid world-building, with layer upon layer of detail; prose so dense and gorgeous you can scoop up the words like handfuls of jewels; a mischievous sense of humor; and a warm and hopeful heart.”
“C. S. E. Cooney’s prose is like a cake baked by the fairies—beautifully layered, rich and precise, so delicious that it should be devoured with a silver fork. Since you can’t eat DARK BREAKERS, I suggest you read it slowly, savoring every slice. And if it gives you strange dreams—well, what did you expect of fairy cake?”—Theodora Goss, World Fantasy and Mythopoeic Award-winning author of The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club series
“DARK BREAKERS is a magnificent parure of novellas and matched stories, a suite of jewelled and velvet tales, delicately linked and ferociously glittering. A baroquely intense confection with a core of typewriters and coal fortunes, DARK BREAKERS is compounded of voluptuous invention and ferocious structural loves—for new romances and old friends, for the works of hands, for mortality and its gifts, and all the possibilities of worlds bleeding, weeping, wandering into each other’s arms.”—Kathleen Jennings, World Fantasy Award-winning author of FLYAWAY
“Few people create worlds as lavish and sensual as those to spring from Cooney’s effervescent imagination. Her writing isn’t so much inspirational, but inspiration itself: gentry-magic spun into pages and paragraphs of glittering, fizzing, jaw-dropping beauty.”—Cassandra Khaw, British Fantasy Award-nominated author of THE ALL-CONSUMING WORLD
Cooney won my eternal devotion with her collection Bone Swans, and then completely blew my mind with her novella Desdemona and the Deep – which I couldn’t not put on my Best SFF of the Decade list. So you can maybe begin to imagine my reaction when I learned we were getting a whole collection of stories set in Desdemona‘s verse – and then my request for an ARC was approved!!! So YES, this is one of my Fall must-reads.
The Sit-Down-and-Read-Em-Already-Sia
Ember Boys (Flint and Tinder, #1) by Gregory Ashe Representation: Bisexual MCs
Published on: 12th August 2020
Genres: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads
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Emmett Bradley thinks his adventures are over. Together with his friends, he stopped an ancient evil and lived to tell about it. But life as a survivor, even as a survivor of a victory, isn’t easy, and when Emmett runs away from Vehpese, Wyoming, he takes a few things with him: a battered ego, a broken heart, and his addictions. He’s lucky that Jim Spencer, his former English teacher, happens to have ended up in the same small, coastal town. He’s even luckier that Jim is doing everything he can to help Emmett hold himself together.
When Emmett’s parents commit him to the psychiatric ward of an infamous hospital, though, Emmett finds himself struggling day to day to remember that the life he’s lived—a life with monsters and psychics—is real. Every day, he finds himself a little less certain that he can trust any of his memories.
A chance encounter with a strange girl, though, forces Emmett to confront the possibility that things around him aren’t quite what they seem. The hospital may not actually be a hospital. His adventures may not be over. And the ancient evil he stopped in Wyoming might have been only one strand in a larger web.
Then Emmett is attacked by a dead man, and he realizes that he’s caught up in a war he doesn’t understand. He must hurry to learn the truth about what’s going on, and he’ll need Jim’s help to do it. He just has to convince his old teacher that things between them aren’t too complicated already—but first, Emmett will have to convince himself.
Note: Emmett has previously appeared in the Hollow Folk series.
Ember Boys is the first book of a new series set after the events of Ashe’s Hollow Folk series. As should be obvious from my review, I adored the Hollow Folk books – but when Ember Boys came out, I didn’t immediately start reading because I wanted to reread the HF series first. They’re dark books, and it took me a while to be in the right headspace to read them again, but I just finished my reread, so Ember Boys? Is next on my list!
The Cloudship Trader by Kate Diamond Representation: Nonbinary MC, queernorm world
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads
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While visiting a famed mountaintop market, cloudship flier Miris and nir companion, the Wind spirit Seres, find a merchant selling Star spirits imprisoned inside glass lamps.
And then ney learns that the lamps are only one piece of a cruel plot to capture and enslave Stars, a plot that could spell disaster for the peaceful relationships between people and spirits that have shaped their world for generations.
Joined by the merchant’s assistant Belest, a man running from a terrible situation and desperate to mend the harm he unwittingly aided in, Miris and Seres fly north, seeking the source of the lamps so that they can end the practice before it becomes widespread and unstoppable.
On their journey, they visit wondrous places, meet healers and thieves, politicians and priests, make friends both human and not. But if they are to put a stop to the slavers’ work, Miris and Belest must first learn to trust each other.
For some no-doubt terrible reason, this kept getting pushed down the tbr pile – but now my baby sis and I are going to buddy-read it! I’m excited.
City of Refuge (The Fifth Sacred Thing Book 3) by Starhawk, Jessica Perlstein Representation: Queer cast, MCs of colour
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
Goodreads
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Every city needs three things: a plaza, a hearth, and a sacred tree...
In the violent, desperate world of 2048, eco-catastrophes and societal breakdown have left the country splintered. Yet amidst the ruins stands a green and flourishing city where four things are sacred—Air, Fire, Water, and Earth. When the ruthless Stewards of the Southlands invade, the people of Califia defeat them using nonviolence and magic. But they’ll be back, unless the northerners can liberate the Southlands first.
Healer Madrone struggles to repair the wounds of war and deprivation. Soldier/defector River leads an Army of Liberation to the south. Bird, musician turned guerrilla, longs to return to the fight, but now he’s pledged to deeper powers. How can they build a new world when people are so deeply wounded by the old?
Madrone has a dream... Build a city of refuge in the heartland of the enemy.
Even though The Fifth Sacred Thing means the world to me (you can find my review here) I didn’t find out that there was a sequel until years after it was released. Then, a bit like with Ember Boys, I wanted to reread the previous book first, and it took me a while.
I’m really, really looking forward to finally sitting down with this one, though.
That’s what I’ve got lined up this Fall! What’s on your tbr list?
The post 10 Books to Fall For appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 20, 2021
Must-Have Monday #52!
This week there are NINE new releases I’m excited about, featuring mages and madness and dangerous tales!
The Tensorate Series: (The Black Tides of Heaven, The Red Threads of Fortune, The Descent of Monsters, The Ascent to Godhood) by Neon Yang Representation: queernorm world, queer cast incl trans, nonbinary, pansexual
Published on: 21st September 2021
Genres: Fantasy, High Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads
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The Tensorate Series, which has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus, and Lambda Literary Awards, is an incomparable treasure of modern epic fantasy.
Across four novellas, Neon Yang established themself as a fantasist in bold defiance of the limitations of their genre. Available now in a single volume, these four novellas trace the generational decline of an empire and unfurl a world that is rich and strange beyond anything you've dreamed.
In the Tensorate Series you will find: rebellious nonbinary scions of empire, sky-spanning nagas with experimental souls, revolutionary engineers bent on bringing power to the people, pugilist monks, packs of loyal raptors, and much, much more.
The Tensorate Series omnibus contains The Black Tides of Heaven, The Red Threads of Fortune, The Descent of Monsters, and To Ascend to Godhood
Maybe you’ve read the Tensorate series and maybe you haven’t, but either way we all need the omnibus. Omnibuses are awesome; that’s just a scientific fact!
Gutter Mage by J.S. Kelley Published on: 21st September 2021
Genres: Fantasy
Goodreads
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J.S. Kelley weaves epic fantasy and hardboiled noir in this fast-paced, twisting tale of magic, mystery, and a whole lot of unruly behavior.
In a kingdom where magic fuels everything from street lamps to horseless carriages, the mage guilds of Penador wield power equal to the king himself. So when Lord Edmund’s infant son is kidnapped by the ruthless Alath Guild, he turns to the one person who’s feared by even the most magically adept: Rosalind Featherstone, a.k.a. the Gutter Mage.
But as Roz delves into the circumstances behind the child’s disappearance, she uncovers an old enemy from her traumatic past and a long-brewing plot that could lead to the death of countless innocents, as well as the complete collapse of Penadorian society itself!
I’m really intrigued by this one – I mean, who doesn’t love an underdog mage? They’re the best kind!
Beasts and Beauty: Dangerous Tales by Soman Chainani, Julia Iredale Representation: Queer MCs, MCs of colour
Published on: 21st September 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads
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You think you know these stories, don’t you?
You are wrong.
You don’t know them at all.
Twelve tales, twelve dangerous tales of mystery, magic, and rebellious hearts. Each twists like a spindle to reveal truths full of warning and triumph, truths that capture hearts long kept tame and set them free, truths that explore life . . . and death.
A prince has a surprising awakening . . .
A beauty fights like a beast . . .
A boy refuses to become prey . . .
A path to happiness is lost. . . . then found again.
New York Times bestselling author Soman Chainani respins old stories into fresh fairy tales for a new era and creates a world like no other. These stories know you. They understand you. They reflect you. They are tales for our times. So read on, if you dare.
Fairytale retellings are always interesting – and far more so when they take a more diverse form than the original! I’ve only heard good things about this collection, including the fact that it puts BIPOC and queer characters front and center!
Iron Widow (Iron Widow, #1) by Xiran Jay Zhao Representation: Chinese-coded cast, bisexual love interests, polyamory
Published on: 21st September 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Goodreads
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The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn't matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.
When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it's to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister's death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.
To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.
I’m heartbroken that this one didn’t work for me, but it’s going to work for a LOT of other people, and if it sounds at all interesting to you I hope you give it a try! Especially if you want properly ruthless anti-heroines, because it’s been a long time since I saw one as genuinely borderline-dark as this.
Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune Representation: Bi/pansexual MC, Black gay love interest, Asian-American secondary character, Black secondary character, M/M or mlm
Published on: 21st September 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads
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When a reaper comes to collect Wallace Price from his own funeral, Wallace suspects he really might be dead.
Instead of leading him directly to the afterlife, the reaper takes him to a small village. On the outskirts, off the path through the woods, tucked between mountains, is a particular tea shop, run by a man named Hugo. Hugo is the tea shop's owner to locals and the ferryman to souls who need to cross over.
But Wallace isn't ready to abandon the life he barely lived. With Hugo's help he finally starts to learn about all the things he missed in life.
When the Manager, a curious and powerful being, arrives at the tea shop and gives Wallace one week to cross over, Wallace sets about living a lifetime in seven days.
Under the Whispering Door is a contemporary fantasy about a ghost who refuses to cross over and the ferryman he falls in love with.
I reviewed this book, but the tl;dr version is that it’s going to break your heart – but you will definitely enjoy it.
The Escapement by Lavie Tidhar Published on: 21st September 2021
Genres: Fantasy
Goodreads
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Into the Escapement rides the Stranger, a lone gunman on a quest to rescue his son in a strange parallel reality. But it is easy to lose one’s way on an endlessly shifting, unpredictable landscape. Especially in a place full of dangerous mirror-images of a child's beloved things: lawless heroes, giants made of stone, downtrodden clowns, spectacular symbol storms, and an endless war between gods and shadowy beings.
As the Stranger has learned, the Escapement is a dreamscape of deep mysteries, unlikely allies, and unwinnable battles. Yet the flower the he seeks still lies beyond the Mountains of Darkness. Time is running out as the Stranger journeys deeper into the secret heart of an unimaginable world.
I’ve never managed to get through a Tidhar book before, but Catherynne Valente said this about it
“Lavie Tidhar is a voice to be reckoned with. With The Escapement, he fearlessly crests the wave of the New New Weird with a wild, decadent hybrid of The Dark Tower and Carnivale. A vivid beach read, if the beach was made of greasepaint and gunpowder.”
–which means I’ve just got to try it now, don’t I?
City of Thieves (Battle Dragons #1) by Alex London Representation: MC with ADHD, nonbinary secondary character
Published on: 21st September 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy
Goodreads
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In a modern mega-city built around dragons, one boy gets caught up in the world of underground dragon battles and a high-stakes gang war that could tear his family apart.
Once, dragons nearly drove themselves to extinction. But in the city of Drakopolis, humans domesticated them centuries ago. Now dragons haul the city’s cargo, taxi its bustling people between skyscrapers, and advertise its wares in bright, neon displays. Most famously of all, the dragons battle. Different breeds take to the skies in nighttime bouts between the infamous kins—criminal gangs who rule through violence and intimidation.
Abel has always loved dragons, but after a disastrous showing in his dragon rider’s exam, he's destined never to fly one himself. All that changes the night his sister appears at his window, entrusting him with a secret...and a stolen dragon.
Turns out, his big sister is a dragon thief! Too bad his older brother is a rising star in Drakopolis law enforcement...
To protect his friends and his family, Abel must partner with the stolen beast, riding in kin battles and keeping more secrets than a dragon has scales.
When everyone wants him fighting on their side, can Abel figure out what's worth fighting for?
Please point to the part of that book description that DOESN’T sound mindblowingly epic?!
Love All Year 2021: A Holidays Anthology by K.D. Casey, Kosoko Jackson, Hudson Lin, Jasmine Luck, Elsie Marrone, October Rhea, Soumi Roy, Elizabeth Kahn Representation: MCs of Colour, Queer MCs
Published on: 21st September 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists
Goodreads
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Love All Year is a romance anthology featuring non-Christian holidays and cultural celebrations from around the world.
"The Koufax Curse" by KD Casey: On Tu Bishvat, former baseball rivals—now teammates—plant the seeds of a new romance.
"Kwanzaa Kiss" by Kosoko Jackson: After a breakup, Anthony Jenkins returns home to Atlanta to lick his wounds and help his parents with their annual Kwanzaa scavenger hunt and is paired with his high school crush. Markus Kennedy. Over the next 12 hours, the two men will try to win the scavenger hunt, where finding the pillars of Kwanzaa might be the goal, but love might find its way into their hearts.
"Their Dragonboat" by Hudson Lin: When OB Julie agrees to join the queer women/enby dragon boat team, she didn't expect to fall in love. But team captain Rae, with their ever-changing hair color, a silver lip ring, and sleeve of flower tattoos is too fascinating to resist.
"Yes, Chef" by Jasmine Luck: A lawyer finds himself in hot water when his injured mother can't cook the Lunar New Year feast. He needs lessons, fast. Can new London resident Zoey help him turn up the heat in his kitchen?
"Spiraling Closer" by Elsie Marrone: When recently divorced Jenny accidentally lobs a bread roll at her rabbi's single, hot nephew, the last thing she expects is to find romance. But in the new year, anything can happen--that is, if she can silence her inner critic long enough to give love a second chance.
"Heart and History" by October Rhea: Liberty Stanley is ready to love herself again after leaving a toxic relationship. Black Love Day is the perfect holiday to put her plan into action. Isaac Golden sees Black Love Day as just another thing to teach his students. He likes to run his classroom in his own way, but he won't admit to his new co-teacher Liberty that he is both fumbling the lesson plan and falling for her. As they get to know each other, Isaac discovers that Black Love Day may have something for him after all.
"A Tangled Truce" by Soumi Roy: Rohini should be thrilled when the hottie on the plane to Kolkata turns out to be the man her parents want her to marry. Hridan came to sell his grandma's house, not to fall for a girl whose fear of commitment outweighs their attraction. Hridan has five days of Durga Puja to win her over, while Rohini must decide if he is worth risking her heart for.
This sounds incredibly sweet and soft, and I’m absolutely in love with the idea of an anthology featuring non-Christian holidays! Can’t wait to curl up with this one!
Traitors of the Black Crown (Black Crown, #1) by Cate Pearce Representation: Sapphic MCs, F/F or wlw
Published on: 22nd September 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads
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Three women will betray the black crown. A Knight. A Duchess. A Queen.
Raena Schinen narrowly escaped when the Queen’s guard murdered her entire family. If Raena’s survival is exposed, she’ll be next. For fifteen years Raena has hidden as a male Knight, “Sir Rowan”, consumed by her vengeful desire to assassinate the Queen.
The moment Raena is close enough to exact her revenge, she is unexpectedly exiled to a foreign land. There she serves the common-born Duchess Aven Colby, whose suspicious kinship with the Queen further threatens Raena’s delicate secrets.
Just as they become united in a common goal to curb a looming invasion, unexpected heat and romance blossoms between “Sir Rowan” and Aven. The peril demands they set out on a journey to form clandestine political alliances, risking the Queen’s wrath, and drawing Raena and Aven closer together.
But no one in the kingdom could have imagined the sinister foe rising from below the surface. In order to save themselves and those they love, Raena, Aven, and the Queen must recognize who are the oppressors and who will unite against the Black Crown.
I’m excited for this one – fierce sapphic women in a Game of Thrones-esque setting??? HI YES I’LL TAKE 12 PLEASE AND THANK YOU
That’s all I’ve got for this week! Will you be reading any of these? Did I miss any I should know about? Let me know!
The post Must-Have Monday #52! appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 18, 2021
Revels and Roars and Might Just Rip Your Throat Out: Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder
Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder Genres: Fantasy, Magical Realism, Urban Fantasy
ISBN: 0385546815
Goodreads
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One day, the mother was a mother but then, one night, she was quite suddenly something else...
At home full-time with her two-year-old son, an artist finds she is struggling. She is lonely and exhausted. She had imagined - what was it she had imagined? Her husband, always travelling for his work, calls her from faraway hotel rooms. One more toddler bedtime, and she fears she might lose her mind.
Instead, quite suddenly, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. Sharper canines. Strange new patches of hair. New appetites, new instincts. And from deep within herself, a new voice...
With its clear eyes on contemporary womanhood and sharp take on structures of power, Nightbitch is an outrageously original, joyfully subversive read that will make you want to howl in laughter and recognition. Addictive enough to be devoured in one sitting, this is an unforgettable novel from a blazing new talent.
~never google health worries in the middle of the night
~a field guide to magical, shapeshifting women
~you know what, naptime IS better in the dog house
~the secret is: Give No Fucks
~cooked steak is for the weak
What on earth does one say about a book called Nightbitch?
I picked this up purely because of that amazing title; then the bewitching description convinced me to start reading.
And once I did, I couldn’t stop. Every other book I was already reading; mealtimes; my work; my husband – all else was forgotten. For two days, my world was Nightbitch. I can’t believe this is Yoder’s debut; really? Really? Are we absolutely sure? Surely no one can start right out of the gate with prose so crisp and tight and sharp; surely no one can so perfectly capture the complicated, contradictory powerlessness and power that is being female-bodied on the very first try?
Yoder makes it look effortless.
The nameless main character, referred to only as ‘the Mother’ – just as her child is just ‘the boy’, and her husband is just ‘husband’ – is hilariously, delightfully normal: Yoder makes sure to include the mother’s search terms whenever she goes online seeking explanations for the weird things that are happening to her, a tiny detail that does so much to humanise her – even if what she’s looking up are things like ‘fur growing on the back of my neck’ and ‘a cyst that is definitely the start of a tail’.
Not that she needs any more humanising; from the first line she all but leaps off the page, so complete and real that it almost physically hurts. Because she’s so tired, is the thing; so trapped in a situation the whole world, and she herself, insists is a luxurious decadence, and not a trap of any kind. She is a stay-at-home mom! She gets to spend every moment of every day with her baby while her husband works; isn’t she lucky? Spoiled, even? She’s living the dream!
Except, not.
Let me be blunt; I’m not a mother and have absolutely no desire to be. I’m the eldest child of nine; I have a good bit of experience with small children, enough to be sure I don’t want more, even if I had the temperament for it (I don’t) and no red flags in my genetics to potentially pass on (of those, I have an abundance). My stepmother’s situation is very like that of the mother in Nightbitch, in that my dad is also away more than he’s home and she is, in many ways, effectively a single mom. I tell you this to make it very clear I was already primed to be extremely sympathetic towards the eponymous Nightbitch, because I have a tiny idea of what her situation is like.
What I wasn’t prepared for was how completely immersive Yoder’s writing was, and the deft, hypnotic way she blends the mundane and the magical. Nightbitch is as much about the struggle of naptimes and outings to the park as it is the fact that the main character is – maybe, probably, definitely – turning into a dog, and… I have complicated feelings about child-raising; I did not think anyone could make it compelling to the point that I’d enjoy reading about it. But it helps that Yoder presents it as complicated, as something even a mother has mixed feelings about; something that is not a constant source of joy at all, and yet something it would be unbearable to give up, and even if I don’t understand that on a personal level, Yoder made me believe it.
And there is just something ridiculously awesome about this tired-repressed-be-nice-be-nice woman turning into a literal bitch as the manifestation of all her conflicting feelings, her building rage, her rapidly diminishing store of Fucks. Because, of course, women Like That get called bitches by default, and Yoder makes it literal, and makes it something that, yes, is confusing and scary, but is also enormously freeing and revelatory and delicious. The metaphor is not subtle.
The story as a whole is incisive without providing easy answers – because there just aren’t any – and addictive as hell. But I wouldn’t call it nice. Not just because it’s dissecting a whole bunch of uncomfortable truths and upending this cultural mythology we have about motherhood, but because the Mother character is…human. And sometimes kind of awful, or gross, and even (in her canine shape, mostly) violent. I was incredibly upset by the death of an animal that happens on-page (even as I massively, terrifyingly understood what was going on, even as I got it, it was still upsetting), and readers who are sensitive to animal deaths should consider skipping this one – there’s more than a few scenes where canine!Nightbitch kills rabbits and things, and at least for me it was uncomfortably graphic.
It never felt like it was there just for shock value, though. All of it, even the uncomfortable bits – hells, especially the uncomfortable bits! – fit together in the story Yoder is telling, the point(s) she’s making. This is very much a book about savagery and animalism, about tapping into something vicious and primal and powerful, and if I wish it hadn’t been quite so cis-woman centred – there is a great deal expounding on pregnancy and childbirth and the (cis) female body and how fucking cool it all is, honestly – I still get it. It’s not that pregnancy is the only way to be a mother, and it’s not that you need a functional uterus to be female, but for people who do have uteruses and do experience pregnancy and childbirth and so on…yeah, I can understand how that is seriously trippy to think about. I don’t think it’s TERF-y unless you’re saying only people with XX chromosomes can be mothers/women, and Yoder doesn’t go there. Still, I would have liked to know how the fierce magic Nightbitch discovers would manifest for queer women, for mothers who’ve adopted their kids instead of giving birth to them, for trans women and nonbinary people. That wasn’t part of the point Yoder was making, but it would have been nice.
Nice – not necessary. At least, not for me. Because I think this book is fucking awesome just as it is. Nightbitch is fantasy and thesis and manifesto all in one; an indictment, exploration, and call to arms. It questions and revels and roars. It’s absolutely, definitely one of my favourite reads of the year. And I really hope you’ll give it a try.
The post Revels and Roars and Might Just Rip Your Throat Out: Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 17, 2021
Fast and Furious DNF: Forging a Nightmare by Patricia A. Jackson
Forging a Nightmare by Patricia A. Jackson Representation: Black MC, major Black secondary characters
Published on: 23rd November 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy
ISBN: 0857669222
Goodreads
Unknown to Humanity, the descendants of Fallen Angels live among us. After millennia of living in anonymity, a serial killer has discovered their secret and has marked them for death. FBI Agent Michael Childs is brought in to investigate a series of grisly murders in New York City. The only link between the victims is they were all born with twelve fingers and twelve toes, known in occult circles as the Nephilim, a forsaken people.
A break in the case leads to Marine Corps sniper Anaba Raines who is listed as killed in action in Syria. Michael finds the hardened soldier alive and well, but no longer Human. After getting too close to the truth, Michael refuses to be an unwitting pawn in a 3000-year old vendetta. With the killers closing in, he is forced to confront his own unique heritage or die. Only Anaba can save his life, but at a terrible cost – her freedom.
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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~it’s not the forces of Hell you need to be worried about
~always name a son after his father
~never piss off a Marine
~especially an ex-sniper Marine
~the spear. the magic spear. the spear only the chosen one may wield. the spear–
Forging a Nightmare was one of my most-anticipated reads of the year, but it is, to put it mildly, a trainwreck.
It starts out pretty strong – the prologue was a bit gruesome for me, but showcasing your serial killer in the prologue is pretty standard. Chapter one introduces Michael, our MC, who arrives at the crime scene in a full-on suit of armour after coming from jousting practice – cool hobby, I approve. I was a bit uneasy – the dialogue seemed very forced, the characters speaking in a way that didn’t feel natural so as to give the reader information we needed, but okay, it’s the first chapter, that kind of bump in the road isn’t too big a deal. But then the jump from chapter one to two left me dizzy – I thought at first my ARC might be missing a chapter, the transition was so sudden and apparently random, only explained later – and chapter three? Reveals the identity and motivations of the bad guys. From their POV, as well.
I mean…what? Cool, I now have almost no incentive to keep reading. And double-cool, the reason the bad guys aren’t going after Michael? Is Because Reasons. It’s literally ‘because I said so’ from the in-charge bad guy.
Yeah, that doesn’t fly with me. You’ve revealed the bad guys, and also the Big Secret behind Michael’s heritage (via Very Heavy Hint, one the reader can’t possibly miss) within the first 60 pages. I mean…what do I have to care about now?
It rapidly goes downhill from there. Angels attack Michael, but they’re basically just humans with wings – a take I hate wherever I find it. He’s saved by a very bad-tempered lady who shapeshifts into a demon horse (the eponymous Nightmare), because apparently demon horses are designed to kill angels. Then Michael is whisked away to a church, where the priest there reveals that a) the priest is an angel, b) Michael’s a Nephilim (which we already knew, see the Heavy Hint from earlier) c) not only is Michael a Nephilim, he’s some kind of Nephilim Chosen One, and d) not only is Michael a Nephilim, his dad is the Archangel Michael.
Because of course he is.
I probably would have had an easier time with all this if Nephilim!Michael had had a less easy time with it – he asks almost no questions, doesn’t seem to have any trouble believing all of this, and is totally fine with being told he needs to take a trip to Hell immediately to find a weapon capable of fighting off the Bad Angels. Literally his only response is ‘give me a sec, I’ll grab my jousting gear from the car’. Um??? Why do you not have a gazillion questions (like why the angel Michael, the angel priest, and/or, you know, GOD, can’t handle the Bad Angels themselves)? Why do you not need convincing? Why aren’t you freaking out?
Why are you taking your practice sword – which is presumably blunt, since it’s a practice sword – to Hell? I DON’T THINK BLUNT OBJECTS WILL GET YOU VERY FAR, MICHAEL. Except that they do, because – despite it being repeatedly referred to as a practice sword, underscoring the idea that it must be blunt – Reasons, I guess. I know a fair bit about Ren Faires and looked it up just to be certain, and no, those kinds of swords should not be sharp. They’re called ‘stage combat swords’, meant specifically for things like LARPing and Ren Faire displays and movie fight scenes – and they’re blunt. As in, they will definitely not take a demon’s head off.
Don’t even get me started on the trip to Hell and the completely random pronouncement that Michael is now the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse. At that point, I couldn’t take it any more and called it.
THIS IS ALL IN ONE DAY, BTW. Which makes it even worse. I get the appeal of a plot that keeps moving, but there are so many revelations here that it’s just unbelievable that Michael gets no time for introspection or questioning; nor is there any time for the reader to make sense of anything before the book leaps to the next thing.
The dialogue is a disaster – cringey action-movie lines combined with everyone using everyone else’s name all the time, despite the fact that no one addresses their conversation partner by name more than once (at most). So, so much telling instead of showing – quite a few times it graduated from telling to full-on lecturing the reader. Lectures that tell us facts but don’t explain them, which are the worst kind.
I can’t swear that the book doesn’t improve immensely after the first third of the story, of course, but I seriously doubt it. I do think there might be some appeal here for urban fantasy fans who like fast-paced books that don’t make the reader work too hard – especially if you want something different from the usual werewolves and vampires. But personally, I hated it.
The post Fast and Furious DNF: Forging a Nightmare by Patricia A. Jackson appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 16, 2021
Rubies and Red Pennies: The Little Thieves by Margaret Owen
Little Thieves by Margaret Owen Representation: Demisexual-coded MC, demisexual-coded love interest, secondary sapphic characters and F/F or wlw, very minor nonbinary characters, queernorm world
Published on: 19th October 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
ISBN: 1250191904
Goodreads
Once upon a time, there was a horrible girl...
Vanja Schmidt knows that no gift is freely given, not even a mother's love--and she's on the hook for one hell of a debt. Vanja, the adopted goddaughter of Death and Fortune, was Princess Gisele's dutiful servant up until a year ago. That was when Vanja's otherworldly mothers demanded a terrible price for their care, and Vanja decided to steal her future back... by stealing Gisele's life for herself.
The real Gisele is left a penniless nobody while Vanja uses an enchanted string of pearls to take her place. Now, Vanja leads a lonely but lucrative double life as princess and jewel thief, charming nobility while emptying their coffers to fund her great escape. Then, one heist away from freedom, Vanja crosses the wrong god and is cursed to an untimely end: turning into jewels, stone by stone, for her greed.
Vanja has just two weeks to figure out how to break her curse and make her getaway. And with a feral guardian half-god, Gisele's sinister fiancé, and an overeager junior detective on Vanja's tail, she'll have to pull the biggest grift yet to save her own life.
Margaret Owen, author of The Merciful Crow series, crafts a delightfully irreverent retelling of "The Goose Girl" about stolen lives, thorny truths, and the wicked girls at the heart of both.
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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~slowly turning into gemstones is Not A Good Time
~a shapeshifter’s guide to humans: be a squirrel and let them get on with it
~this is a TERF-free fairytale
~“I cannot believe I’m attracted to a human civics primer.”
I don’t think the Goose Girl is a very well-known fairytale, and it you do know it, you probably know either the Brothers Grimm version, or the exquisite retelling by Shannon Hale that was published in 2003 (and which I strongly reccomend, because it is, as I said, exquisite).
Hale’s retelling sticks very closely to the Grimm version of the story.
Owen’s does not. And I am very glad, because it’s awesome.
If you don’t know the fairytale, the most important part is that a wicked maid steals the identity of her nobleborn mistress, leaving the original, true princess to suffer life as a peasant (sometimes after the maid has tried to kill her). Vanja is the wicked maid of the story, but it’s immediately clear that she’s far less one-dimensional than her Grimm counterpart: abandoned by her birth mother, Vanja has been raised by two of the Low Gods – Death and Fortune. But the Low Gods don’t do anything for free, and once she was old enough her new mothers told her she had to choose which of them she would serve – not as a respected priestess or anything, but as a servant or slave – for the rest of her life. Weirdly enough, Vanja wasn’t super in love with this plan and refused to choose, so now she’s living among other mortals, with the deal being that whoever she calls on for help first – Death or Fortune – is the one she’ll serve.
Vanja has no intentions of calling on either of them ever, and she has a plan to get herself beyond their reach for good. It involves being a brilliant cat-burglar, and, disguised as the princess she betrayed, taking the Empire’s nobility for everything they’ve got.
And it’s all going great – right up until another Low God curses her to turn into jewels as punishment for her greed, and the princess’s monstrous fiance comes home early. And the cherry on top? An investigator has arrived to look into Vanja’s robberies.
When it rains, it pours.
I don’t usually like first-person, but I think it was exactly the right choice for this story, because getting the reader inside Vanja’s head is critical. At first glance, what she’s done – stealing princess Giselle’s identity, stealing gold and jewelry from dozens of people – looks immoral, and maybe it is. But it’s very hard to believe that when you learn and understand Vanja’s reasons, not all of which are revealed at once. Yes, she’s out to escape her adopted mothers, but there’s a lot more to it than that. This is fundamentally a story about classism, not just in the sense that Owen is critiquing the system that gives a few people everything and takes-takes-takes from the rest, but this is a story that demands we get down from our high horses; that the reason many criminals turn to crime is because the world’s pushed them there, and we need to acknowledge that. It’s not as simple as this person broke the law and should be condemned out of hand and forever for it.
The little thief steals gold, but the great one steals kingdoms; and only one goes to the gallows…
It’s complicated, and messy, and maybe not so easy to tell who’s in the right and who’s in the wrong.
Not that Owen lectures us with this; it’s something that unfolds naturally in the process of telling the story. Something we can’t help but work out for ourselves as we see what Vanja has to deal with – and what she’s had to deal with, in carefully chosen flashes of the past.
And there’s just no getting away from the fact that Vanja is a brilliant character, the kind you love to love – prickly, smart, snarky–
“You see,” I say gravely, “when two people love each other very much, or at least think the other’s passable if you squint–”
–and secretly, terribly lonely. Even if that’s not something she can admit to herself.
So it’s a good thing the rest of the cast sparkles as it gathers around her. Some take a little longer than others to show their best sides, but others you’ll adore immediately, like the delightfully feral demigoddess Ragne, the daughter of the Low God who cursed Vanja and whose task is to oversee Vanja’s attempts to ‘return what she stole’. I have a special place in my heart for feral characters who don’t understand clothes or why humans make things so complicated all the time! Much easier to shapeshift into a squirrel or cat and let the humans be weird.
But the way they all come together reminds me a little bit of heist stories – even though this isn’t a heist story, it has all the best aspects of one, like found family that has each other’s backs, a team of allies who click together like puzzle pieces, and a brilliant, daring plan that needs to be pulled off without a hitch.
There’s quite a lot to juggle, but Owens never drops the ball. There’s so much story packed into these pages, but the book never feels overfull or rushed; the pacing is perfect, and there’s never a dull moment – even the quieter scenes are vitally important, poignant, powerful. And the writing itself is just as wonderful as it was in The Merciful Crow duology, Owen’s previous books (which made it onto my Best of the Decade list, so, you know, take it as read that Owens is one hell of a writer, okay?), action-packed but still lyrical, with imagery you won’t forget in a hurry;
I find Irmgard’s face twisted with pure, seething fury. Then it’s sucked under like a spider drowned in icing.
I mean. !!! That is gross and visceral and the perfect way to describe it. Gah!
And because I’m me, I can’t finish this review without mentioning the worldbuilding. Owen has gone ahead and created a whole new world for Vanja’s tale, one that uses lords-and-ladies era Germany/Prussia as a starting point (I think – there’s an Empress and castles and lots of German words, anyway, especially for sausages!) and then spirals from there into something much more unique. Some things, like kobolds and nachtmaren, take their names from and are obviously inspired by Germanic and Slavic folklore, but what won my heart were the Low Gods – universal powers and concepts given (mostly) humanoid form. Owen’s imagination goes beautifully wild with the Low Gods – I adored details like Fortune’s crown of coins and bones, and the fact that the Low Gods change drastically from region to region – not every iteration of Fortune has a crown, for example, or even a humanoid shape.
the wreath of coins about her brow shimmered and flipped, changing from copper to coal to silver to gold.
There’s also the fact that this is a world completely lacking in queerphobia. Vanja herself is very clearly coded as demisexual, but we also have sapphic characters in our cast, and glimpse several characters who use they/them pronouns, as well as several men with husbands. Maybe my favourite detail in this respect was the inclusion of trans people; although there aren’t any among our cast, we know they exist, and are accepted, and maybe best of all, it’s made very clear that our sapphic characters would happily marry trans women – because women are women regardless of what’s between their legs, thanks.
Owen’s world may have evil fiances using monsters to clear their way to the throne, but TERFs can GTFO and stay-the-fuck gone!
Which is all to say – this book seriously rocks, people. It’s deep and fast and clever, and beautiful in all sorts of unexpected ways. It has many giggle-moments. It’s such an amazing, expansive retelling.
It’s bloody brilliant, and if you haven’t pre-ordered it already, you should.
The post Rubies and Red Pennies: The Little Thieves by Margaret Owen appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 15, 2021
I Can’t Wait For…Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman
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 Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman!
Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman Representation: Trans MC, bi/pansexual MC
Published on: 22nd February 2022
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads
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A whirlwind romance between an eccentric archivist and a grieving widow explores what it means to be at home in your own body in this clever, humorous, and heartfelt novel.
When archivist Sol meets Elsie, the larger than life widow of a moderately famous television writer who's come to donate her wife's papers, there's an instant spark. But Sol has a secret: he suffers from an illness called vampirism, and hides from the sun by living in his basement office. On their way to falling in love, the two traverse grief, delve into the Internet fandom they once unknowingly shared, and navigate the realities of transphobia and the stigmas of carrying the "vampire disease."
Then, when strange things start happening at the collection, Sol must embrace even more of the unknown to save himself and his job. DEAD COLLECTIONS is a wry novel full of heart and empathy, that celebrates the journey, the difficulties and joys, in finding love and comfort within our own bodies.
I have a really hard time articulating even to myself what it is about Dead Collections that snatched my attention the second it crossed my dash, because it seems to be something that’s more than the sum of its parts. I mean, the parts are great – a new take on vampires! A trans vampire! A trans vampire librarian!!! Excuse me, hell to the yes! But it feels like more than that, and I don’t know if I heard or read something about it that I’ve now forgotten, but that has sneaked down to my subconscious and made a nest there and is whispering be extra excited about this one even if you don’t remember why!!! or what, but I’m all champagne bubbles and grabby-hands for this book. Thinking about it makes my toes wiggle with delight.
Maybe because Fellman has already won the Lambda Award with his first book, Breath of the Sun? Maybe because his other 2022 release, The Two Doctors Górski, also sounds incredible? I don’t know, folx; I can only tell you I’m in love with a book I haven’t even read yet.
It’s not the first time, and I’m sure it won’t be the last!
The post I Can’t Wait For…Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 14, 2021
10 Books With Numbered Titles
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!
Today’s theme is Books With Numbers in the Title, and I’m stupidly pleased with myself for managing to get from one to ten!
One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston Representation: Bisexual MC, lesbian Asian-American love interest, F/F or wlw, trans secondary character, Black secondary character, Jewish secondary character, secondary M/M or mlm, queer cast
Genres: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads
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From the New York Times bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue comes a new romantic comedy that will stop readers in their tracks...
For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.
But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train.
Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August’s day when she needed it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things, after all.
Casey McQuiston’s One Last Stop is a magical, sexy, big-hearted romance where the impossible becomes possible as August does everything in her power to save the girl lost in time.
I have made no secret whatsoever about the fact that this is one of my favourite books of all time, so it seems only appropriate that it be #1! You can read my woefully inadequate review here.
The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two (Fairyland, #3) by Catherynne M. Valente, Ana Juan Goodreads
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Here is another rich, beautifully told, wisely humorous and passionately layered book from New York Times bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente.
This is actually the third book in the Fairyland series and concludes a pretty major arc of September’s journey – but like every other book in the series, it’s ridiculously beautiful, with Valente’s signature whimsy and imagination on full display.
Three Parts Dead (Craft Sequence, #1) by Max Gladstone Representation: Black MC
Genres: Fantasy
Goodreads
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A god has died, and it’s up to Tara, first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring Him back to life before His city falls apart.
Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without Him, the metropolis’s steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot.
Tara’s job: resurrect Kos before chaos sets in. Her only help: Abelard, a chain-smoking priest of the dead god, who’s having an understandable crisis of faith.
When Tara and Abelard discover that Kos was murdered, they have to make a case in Alt Coulumb’s courts—and their quest for the truth endangers their partnership, their lives, and Alt Coulumb’s slim hope of survival.
Set in a phenomenally built world in which justice is a collective force bestowed on a few, craftsmen fly on lightning bolts, and gargoyles can rule cities, Three Parts Dead introduces readers to an ethical landscape in which the line between right and wrong blurs.
Are there still any self-respecting fantasy fans who haven’t read Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence??? If so, you’re in for a serious treat, because this series is incredible, and the first book – even if it has Three in the title! – is still one of the best of the best.
The Four Profound Weaves by R.B. Lemberg Representation: Cast of colour, trans MCs
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads
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Wind: To match one's body with one's heart
Sand: To take the bearer where they wish
Song: In praise of the goddess Bird
Bone: To move unheard in the night
The Surun' do not speak of the master weaver, Benesret, who creates the cloth of bone for assassins in the Great Burri Desert. But Uiziya now seeks her aunt Benesret in order to learn the final weave, although the price for knowledge may be far too dear to pay.
Among the Khana, women travel in caravans to trade, while men remain in the inner quarter as scholars. A nameless man struggles to embody Khana masculinity, after many years of performing the life of a woman, trader, wife, and grandmother.
As the past catches up to the nameless man, he must choose between the life he dreamed of and Uiziya, and Uiziya must discover how to challenge a tyrant, and weave from deaths that matter.
Set in R. B. Lemberg's beloved Birdverse.
I really wish the publisher had included the short story Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds, which immediately precedes the events of Four (and which you can read here) in this book – but even without it, this is a deeply beautiful book set in one of my favourite worlds, which, among other things, will leave you never thinking of magic carpets in the same way again!
The Tale of the Five Omnibus by Diane Duane Representation: Queernorm world, queer cast, nonbinary/genderfluid love interest, polyamory/group marriage
Genres: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads
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This is totally cheating, but do I care??? Absolutely not, when it means another chance to wave this series in your face! This is full-on Epic Fantasy, except queerness is so normal they don’t have words for different sexualities – the only label is ‘people’. There’s a sorcerer who needs to claim his power, an outcast prince who must claim his throne, and what are still the coolest take on dragons I’ve ever seen – all arrayed against a dark god who can’t be destroyed without destroying all of reality. Duane also writes some of the most beautiful magic that actually feels magical, and you seriously need to read these books, okay?
Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente Representation: Biracial queer MC
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads
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A New York Times bestselling author offers a brilliant reinvention of one of the best-known fairy tales of all time with Snow White as a gunslinger in the mythical Wild West.
Forget the dark, enchanted forest. Picture instead a masterfully evoked Old West where you are more likely to find coyotes as the seven dwarves. Insert into this scene a plain-spoken, appealing narrator who relates the history of our heroine’s parents—a Nevada silver baron who forced the Crow people to give up one of their most beautiful daughters, Gun That Sings, in marriage to him. Although her mother’s life ended as hers began, so begins a remarkable tale: equal parts heartbreak and strength. This girl has been born into a world with no place for a half-native, half-white child. After being hidden for years, a very wicked stepmother finally gifts her with the name Snow White, referring to the pale skin she will never have. Filled with fascinating glimpses through the fabled looking glass and a close-up look at hard living in the gritty gun-slinging West, this is an utterly enchanting story…at once familiar and entirely new.
Another beautiful novella, Snow White as a half-Indigenous sharpshooter! Come on, do you really need to hear anything else?
The Seventh Perfection by Daniel Polansky Genres: Fantasy
Goodreads
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Daniel Polansky returns with The Seventh Perfection, an innovative, mind-bending fantasy mystery.
When a woman with perfect memory sets out to solve a riddle, the threads she tugs on could bring a whole city crashing down. The God-King who made her is at risk, and his other servants will do anything to stop her.
To become the God-King's Amanuensis, Manet had to master all seven perfections, developing her body and mind to the peak of human performance. She remembers everything that has happened to her, in absolute clarity, a gift that will surely drive her mad. But before she goes, Manet must unravel a secret which threatens not only the carefully prepared myths of the God-King's ascent, but her own identity and the nature of truth itself.
It’s not very often that we get a book written in second person, and even less often do we get a book that does it well, but Seventh Perfection is definitely one of them. Every chapter is a transcript of a character speaking to the main character, whose voice we never hear except in the questions answered. It’s a brilliant approach to a sharp and shining story that you won’t forget in a hurry.
Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods by Catherynne M. Valente Published on: 26th April 2022
Genres: Fantasy
Goodreads
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From New York Times bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente comes an inventive new fantasy following a boy journeying away from the only home he’s ever known and into the magical realm of the dead in order to fulfill a bargain for his people.
Osmo Unknown hungers for the world beyond his small town. With the life that Littlebridge society has planned for him, the only taste Osmo will ever get are his visits to the edge of the Fourpenny Woods where his mother hunts. Until the unthinkable happens: his mother accidentally kills a Quidnunk, a fearsome and intelligent creature that lives deep in the forest.
None of this should have anything to do with poor Osmo, except that a strange treaty was once formed between the Quidnunx and the people of Littlebridge to ensure that neither group would harm the other. Now that a Quidnunk is dead, as the firstborn child of the hunter who killed her, Osmo must embark on a quest to find the Eightpenny Woods—the mysterious kingdom where all wild forest creatures go when they die—and make amends.
Accompanied by a very rude half-badger, half-wombat named Bonk and an antisocial pangolin girl called Never, it will take all of Osmo’s bravery and cleverness to survive the magic of the Eightpenny Woods to save his town…and make it out alive.
As one of Valente’s patreons I’ve actually gotten to read drafts of the first few chapters of this, and it’s so breathtakingly gorgeous and strange and sweet. Alas, it won’t be released until next year, but I’ve already got my copy preordered and I know it’s going to be worth the wait!
Nine Years of Silver (Love Has Claws, #1) by Parker Foye Representation: M/M, minor nonbinary character
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads
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Briar Augustin, a bounty hunter, returns to his hometown on the trail of a killer. There he becomes once more entangled with his first love, Quinn Lawrence, who is as integral to Briar's hunt as he is to the mythology of Lastings. Can Briar find his bounty and return to the city, resisting the call of the sea? Or will he be drawn back into Lastings' secrets—and the arms of Quinn Lawrence?
Lastings: Where some things can only be mined out.
*
Nine Years of Silver is the first story from Love Has Claws, a speculative romance trilogy linked by the town of Lastings.
Content Warnings: mentions of abusive childhood; bloody violence; off-screen murder; drowning (real/dream); claustrophobic scenes.
All you have to do is yell ‘Selkie!’ in my general direction and I’ll come running, but when you feature a male selkie? In a story of dark magics and queerness? I am there. And honestly, it’s even better than it sounds!
The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow Representation: MC of colour, secondary sapphic character
Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Portal Fantasy
Goodreads
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In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place.
Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.
Jumping right past Ten and directly for Ten Thousand is another all-time favourite of mine! Not that that will surprise anyone who’s read it, because this is a gorgeous, intense, truly magical book, one of those that so perfectly taps into all the deepest secret longings of your heart that it hurts.
But in a really good way.
There we go – 10 books, from one to ten, all of them fabulous must-reads!
The post 10 Books With Numbered Titles appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 13, 2021
Must-Have Monday #51!
We have another packed week, with TEN new releases to be excited about – including faerie weddings, vampires coming for their exes, and dream-yokai!
Daughter of the Yellow Dragon: A Mongolian Saga (Fractured Empire, #1) by Starr Z. Davies Representation: Mongolian cast
Published on: 13th September 2021
Goodreads
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Genghis Khan united a nation and created a vast empire for his heirs. But after 200 years of civil war, his empire has fallen into the dark ages.
Mandukhai dreams of being a fierce warrior woman, but her dreams are shattered when she is forced to become the second wife to the Great Khan. Unebolod spent his life in the Great Khan's shadow, preparing for a day when he can seize control of the empire. But when he forms a dangerous alliance with Mandukhai, it swiftly transforms into a passion that could destroy them both.
Just as the two are certain their fate will one day bring them together and make Unebolod the next Great Khan, a young prince surfaces to steal the Great Khan's attention and the hearts of the nation.
Daughter of the Yellow Dragon is the first book in a gripping, gritty historical fiction series based on the epic life of one of the most underrated women in history. The series draws you into a world of brutal Mongol steppe life, deadly political games, and supernatural beliefs.
Please be advised: This book contains adult situations, graphic violence, assault, and personal loss.
PINNACLE BOOK ACHIEVEMENT AWARD WINNER!Daughter of the Yellow Dragon is the Winter 2021 NABE Pinnacle Book Achievement Award Winner for outstanding Historical Fiction.
“This story is nothing short of a masterpiece!” – Readers’ Favorite Book Reviews
"A Mongolian Game of Thrones!" – Katherine Roberts, author of Prince of the Wolves: The Legend of Genghis Khan
Out today is a High (or maybe even Epic?) Fantasy set in ancient Mongolia! Personally I’m crossing my fingers for literal dragons to show up, but either way it definitely sounds like it sohuld be interesting!
When Sorrows Come (October Daye, #15) by Seanan McGuire Representation: Bi/pansexual love interest, secondary sapphic characters
Published on: 14th September 2021
Genres: Urban Fantasy
Goodreads
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Toby's getting married! Now in hardcover, the fifteenth novel of the Hugo-nominated, New York Times-bestselling October Daye urban fantasy series.
It's hard to be a hero. There's always something needing October "Toby" Daye's attention, and her own desires tend to fall by the wayside in favor of solving the Kingdom's problems. That includes the desire to marry her long-time suitor and current fiancé, Tybalt, San Francisco's King of Cats. She doesn't mean to keep delaying the wedding, it just sort of...happens. And that's why her closest friends have taken the choice out of her hands, ambushing her with a court wedding at the High Court in Toronto. Once the High King gets involved, there's not much even Toby can do to delay things...
...except for getting involved in stopping a plot to overthrow the High Throne itself, destabilizing the Westlands entirely, and keeping her from getting married through nothing more than the sheer volume of chaos it would cause. Can Toby save the Westlands and make it to her own wedding on time? Or is she going to have to choose one over the other?
Includes an all-new bonus novella!
I can’t believe this series is going to be FIFTEEN books strong as of tomorrow! (And that’s without including all the short stories and novellas we’ve gotten too!) One of my favourite aspects of this series was that it took Toby and Tybalt a good while to get together, but I’m SPINNING IN CIRCLES OF GLEE that we’re finally getting the wedding!!! I just love them and want them to be happy, okay? And although that obviously doesn’t necessitate a wedding, I s2g I will take a nice iron FIREPLACE POKER to any asshat who tries to get in their way!
Tl;dr: I can’t wait to read this!!!
The Robber Girl by Franny Billingsley Published on: 14th September 2021
Genres: Fantasy
Goodreads
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Part literary mystery, part magical tour de force--an incantatory novel of fierce beauty, lyricism, and originality from a National Book Award Finalist
A brilliant puzzle of a book from the author of Chime and The Folk Keeper plunges us into the vulnerable psyche of one of the most memorable unreliable narrators to grace the page in decades. The Robber Girl has a good dagger. Its voice in her head is as sharp as its two edges that taper down to a point.
Today, the Robber Girl and her dagger will ride with Gentleman Jack into the Indigo Heart to claim the gold that's rightfully his. But instead of gold, the Robber Girl finds a dollhouse cottage with doorknobs the size of apple seeds. She finds two dolls who give her three tasks, even though she knows that three is too many tasks. The right number of tasks is two, like Grandmother gave to Gentleman Jack: Fetch unto me the mountain's gold, to build our city fair. Fetch unto me the wingless bird, and I shall make you my heir.
The Robber Girl finds what might be a home, but to fight is easier than to trust when you're a mystery even to yourself and you're torn between loyalty and love.
The Robber Girl is at once achingly real--wise to the nuances of trauma--and loaded with magic, action, and intrigue. Every sentence shines, sharp as a blade, in a beautifully crafted novel about memory, identity, and the power of language to heal and reconstruct our lives.
Chime and The Folk Keeper are still among my favourite books 10+ years after I first read them, so I’m BEYOND excited that we’re getting a new Billingsley book!!! I confess to finding the blurb a little unclear, but I don’t see that as a problem; I’d rather have as few preconceptions about the story as possible when I dive in. Billingsley always turns the table on the reader anyway!
The Hollow Heart (The Midnight Lie, #2) by Marie Rutkoski Representation: Sapphic MCs
Published on: 14th September 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads
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Intrigue, romance, and magic abound in the heart-stopping conclusion to Marie Rutkoski’s Forgotten Gods duology.
At the end of The Midnight Lie, Nirrim offered up her heart to the God of Thieves in order to restore her people’s memories of their city’s history. The Half Kith who once lived imprisoned behind the city’s wall now realize that many among them are powerful. Meanwhile, the person Nirrim once loved most, Sid, has returned to her home country of Herran, where she must navigate the politics of being a rogue princess who has finally agreed to do her duty.
In the Herrani court, rumors begin to grow of a new threat rising across the sea, of magic unleashed on the world, and of a cruel, black-haired queen who can push false memories into your mind, so that you believe your dearest friends to be your enemies.
Sid doesn’t know that this queen is Nirrim, who seeks her revenge against a world that has wronged her. Can Sid save Nirrim from herself? Does Nirrim even want to be saved? As blood is shed and war begins, Sid and Nirrim find that it might not matter what they want…for the gods have their own plans.
I’ve been hearing about The Midnight Lie, the first book in this duology, since it came out last year, but there was always something else higher up on my tbr. Last week I opened it up on a whim, and it dragged me under like a riptide – so I was kind of delighted when I realised the sequel is out tomorrow! PERFECT TIMING, because I really need to know what happens next!
The Lost Girls: A Vampire Revenge Story by Sonia Hartl Representation: Bi/pansexual MC, F/F
Published on: 14th September 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads
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Getting over Your Vampire Ex is as Easy as Killing Him and Stealing His Girlfriend
Holly Liddell has been stuck with crimped hair since 1987 when she agreed to let her boyfriend, Elton, turn her into a vampire. But when he ditches her at a gas station a few decades into their eternity together, she realizes that being young forever actually means working graveyard shifts at Taco Bell, sleeping in seedy motels, and being supernaturally compelled to follow your ex from town to town—at least until Holly meets Elton’s other exes.
It seems that Holly isn’t the only girl Elton seduced into this wretched existence. He turned Ida in 1921, then Rose in 1954, and he abandoned them both before Holly was even born. Now Rose and Ida want to kill him before he can trick another girl into eternal adolescence, and they’ll need Holly’s help to do it. And once Holly starts falling for Elton’s vulnerable new conquest, Parker, she’ll do anything to save her.
To kill Elton for good, Holly and her friends will have to dig up their pasts, rob a bank, and reconcile with the people they’ve hurt in their search for eternal love. And to win the girl, Holly will have to convince Parker that she’s more than just Elton’s crazy ex—even though she is trying to kill him.
I am so here for someone finally giving the creepy-ancient-vampire-who-turns-teens what he deserves! And bonus points for being queer!
Yume by Sifton Tracey Anipare Representation: Black MC,
Published on: 14th September 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy
Goodreads
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A modern-day fantasy novel about demons, dreams, and a young woman teaching English in Japan.
Cybelle teaches English in a small city in Japan. Her contract is up for renewal, her mother is begging her to come back to Canada, and she is not sure where she belongs anymore. She faces ostracism and fear daily, but she loves her job, despite its increasing difficulties. She vows to do her best — even when her sleep, appetite, and life in general start to get weird, and conforming to the rules that once helped her becomes a struggle.
Meanwhile, yokai feast and cavort around Osaka and Kyoto as the barrier between their world and the human world thins. Zaniel spends his nights walking the dream world and serving his demon “bodyguard,” Akki. But there is a new yokai on the scene, and it has gotten on Akki’s bad side. When Cybelle gets caught up in the supernatural clash, she has to figure out what is real and, more importantly, what she really wants … before her life spirals out of control altogether.
I have very little idea what to expect of this one, but I’m fascinated by that bright colourful cover, and I’ve seen the story described as a ‘grown up Spirited Away’. So it definitely seems appropriate to include it here!
Landfill Mountains by Rab Ferguson Published on: 14th September 2021
Genres: Sci Fi
Goodreads
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In a world ravaged by the effects of climate change sixteen-year-old, Joe has been left with nothing but mountains full of junk.
When Joe and his friends are caught in an avalanche of waste, a six-year-old girl named Lily is left deathly ill. Joe travels to the city to seek out help for her.
Nothing could prepare him for what he finds on the way: a dangerous prince wearing a suit made of stars, the wolf from Red Riding Hood bearing its teeth, and the reality-changing power of storytelling aloud.
I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but…that is a really beautiful cover. Just saying! But the cover is also quietly sad, and that seems appropriate, since Ferguson’s story is set post-environmental collapse. Several earlier reviews have called it a dystopia (I’m not convinced they’re using that word properly, or if there’s some horrible governing body still existing in this future), but mixed up with folk tales and fairytales. It might be too bleak for me right now, but I’d like to give it a try.
A Dark and Starless Forest by Sarah Hollowell Representation: Fat MC, secondary Black, Deaf, Mexican-American, pansexual, transgender, asexual, and nonbinary characters
Published on: 14th September 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy
Goodreads
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When her siblings start to go missing, a girl must confront the dark thing that lives in the forest—and the growing darkness in herself—in this debut YA contemporary fantasy for fans of Wilder Girls.
Derry and her eight siblings live in an isolated house by the lake, separated from the rest of the world by an eerie and menacing forest. Frank, the man who raised them after their families abandoned them, says it’s for their own good. After all, the world isn’t safe for people with magic. And Derry feels safe—most of the time.
Until the night her eldest sister disappears. Jane and Derry swore to each other that they’d never go into the forest, not after their last trip ended in blood, but Derry is sure she saw Jane walk into the trees. When another sibling goes missing and Frank’s true colors start to show, feeling safe is no longer an option. Derry will risk anything to protect the family she has left. Even if that means returning to the forest that has started calling to Derry in her missing siblings’ voices.
As Derry spends more time amidst the trees, her magic grows more powerful . . . and so does the darkness inside her, the viciousness she wants to pretend doesn’t exist. But saving her siblings from the forest and from Frank might mean embracing the darkness. And that just might be the most dangerous thing of all.
This is packed full of diversity, magic, and family, and if you’re curious you can read an excerpt over here!
Stalking Shadows by Cyla Panin Published on: 14th September 2021
Genres: Fantasy
Goodreads
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A gothic YA fantasy debut about a young woman striving to break her sister's curse and stop the killing in her small French town
Seventeen-year-old Marie mixes perfumes to sell on market day in her small eighteenth-century French town. She wants to make enough to save a dowry for her sister, Ama, in hopes of Ama marrying well and Marie living in the level of freedom afforded only to spinster aunts. But her perfumes are more than sweet scents in cheap, cut-glass bottles: A certain few are laced with death. Marie laces the perfume delicately--not with poison but with a hint of honeysuckle she's trained her sister to respond to. Marie marks her victim, and Ama attacks. But she doesn't attack as a girl. She kills as a beast.
Marking Ama's victims controls the damage to keep suspicion at bay. But when a young boy turns up dead one morning, Marie is forced to acknowledge she might be losing control of Ama. And if she can't control her, she'll have to cure her. Marie knows the only place she'll find the cure is in the mansion where Ama was cursed in the first place, home of Lord Sebastien LaClaire. But once she gets into the mansion, she discovers dark secrets hidden away--secrets of the curse, of Lord Sebastien . . . and of herself.
Stories about sisters are always intriguing, and I’m majorly interested in a pair where one marks people for the other to kill! This is supposed to have some pretty unexpected twists, too, so I’m definitely going to be checking it out.
You Sexy Thing by Cat Rambo Representation: Queer cast
Published on: 16th November 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Goodreads
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Farscape meets The Great British Bake Off in this fantastic space opera You Sexy Thing from former SFWA President, Cat Rambo.
Just when they thought they were out...
TwiceFar station is at the edge of the known universe, and that's just how Niko Larson, former Admiral in the Grand Military of the Hive Mind, likes it.
Retired and finally free of the continual war of conquest, Niko and the remnants of her former unit are content to spend the rest of their days working at the restaurant they built together, The Last Chance.
But, some wars can't ever be escaped, and unlike the Hive Mind, some enemies aren't content to let old soldiers go. Niko and her crew are forced onto a sentient ship convinced that it is being stolen and must survive the machinations of a sadistic pirate king if they even hope to keep the dream of The Last Chance alive.
This has been described as whimsical and fun and silly, with sci fi foodie vibes, so you can bet I’m going to be snatching it up! And if you’re still wondering whether you want to, you can read an excerpt from the book over here!
That’s it this week! Did I miss any? Will you be reading any of these? Let me know!
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