Siavahda's Blog, page 84

Heartstoppingly Breathtaking: In The Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu

In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu
Representation: Asian-coded cast, Nonbinary MCs who use neopronouns, disabled trans PoV character, sapphic PoV character, F/F or wlw
Published on: 31st August 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
ISBN: 1250792991
Goodreads

In the Watchful City explores borders, power, diaspora, and transformation in an Asian-inspired mosaic novella that melds the futurism of Lavie Tidhar’s Central Station with the magical wonder of Catherynne M. Valente’s Palimpsest.

The city of Ora uses a complex living network called the Gleaming to surveil its inhabitants and maintain harmony. Anima is one of the cloistered extrasensory humans tasked with watching over Ora's citizens. Although ær world is restricted to what æ can see and experience through the Gleaming, Anima takes pride and comfort in keeping Ora safe from all harm.

All that changes when a mysterious visitor enters the city carrying a cabinet of curiosities from around the world, with a story attached to each item. As Anima’s world expands beyond the borders of Ora to places—and possibilities—æ never before imagined to exist, æ finds ærself asking a question that throws into doubt ær entire purpose: What good is a city if it can’t protect its people?

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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~cabinet of curiosities = treasure-trove of delights
~is anyone straight and cis??? no
~magic + scifi = perfect
~would you rather possess a gecko or a crow???
~if you chose one item to represent your life, what would it be?

I do not know nearly enough about Asian cultures to be able to tell you which parts of this novella (names, countries, cultures) draw from which real-life people and place – it’s clear this book draws inspiration from various parts of Asia, but I couldn’t guess at specifics until I looked through reviews written by more knowledgeable readers. (This review over on Goodreads is a great example.)

All I can tell you is that In The Watchful City is absolutely beautiful.

The book description uses the term ‘mosaic novella’, which I think is perfect: as a mosaic is made up of multiple coloured tiles or stones to make a whole, In The Watchful City is made up of several short stories, contained and given context by an overarching tale. The stories-within-a-story framework is one of my very favourite tropes, and I loved the twist on it here, with each story literally being contained as a memento within a qíjìtáng, the ‘cabinet of curiosities’ mentioned in the book description. The description of the qíjìtáng and its contents is absolutely enchanting; I was overwhelmed with the wanting to hear the story of each and every object.

The sheer number of colors and textures and materials is a feast of sensory data that makes Anima’s head tingle. Warped glass bottles, curiously shaped stones, bundles of documents, glittering trinkets and ornaments, dried flowers still scented with fragile fragrances, textiles woven from unfamiliar threads, taxidermied animals æ’s never seen in the city…

Anima is an augmented human, one of several who oversees the city of Ora. That makes ær sound like a government figure, and æ isn’t; æ functions a lot like a protective AI (which is actually what I thought æ was at first), keeping Ora’s citizens safe and quickly finding criminals through ær awareness of the metaphysical Gleaming and ær ability to possess any of Ora’s wildlife. Ora itself is beautiful, and the blending of technology with the magical Gleaming makes In The Watchful City a rare Science Fantasy novel – which makes perfect sense, because once you start reading, it becomes readily apparent that Lu is not interested in following normal rules or keeping their stories neatly boxed in a single genre category. Science Fantasy is the place where Sci Fi and Fantasy meet to create coruscatingly original stories that neither could contain alone, and you can feel that joyful casting-off of genre expectations in every word of this book.

It is different, and it is different in a way that delights in its own strangeness. Although In The Watchful City repeatedly touched on dark or painful topics – Anima witnesses a suicide-by-drowning in ær role as city-guardian, and the stories within the qíjìtáng contain what’s essentially Chinese foot-binding, sexual (or semi-sexual?) masochism combined with body dysphoria, and references to humans eating (parts of) other sapient beings – it still managed to feel like a celebration. Of human experience, maybe; of language, certainly – I wouldn’t describe the prose as purple at all, but it’s still descriptive and lush and gorgeous. Lu has an incredible way with words; the moment I finished In The Watchful City, I immediately wanted to read it again, just for the beauty of their prose.

the familiar calluses where the handles of her blades have kissed skin so often it’s turned to stone

Anima’s story revolves around the stories æ is told by Vessel, the mysterious but entrancing keeper of the qíjìtáng, and the effect those stories have on ær, how they interact with Anima’s own experiences as Ora’s guardian. But I don’t feel like I can describe any of the stories from the qíjìtáng for you, because even the vaguest description would be a spoiler – you need to greet each story without any preconceptions, any idea what’s coming, to feel the full magic of it. So I will only tell you that they are each stunning, and each very different. The connections between them are not obvious – maybe there aren’t supposed to be any connections between them, but they still don’t feel random. They still fit together, like tiles in a mosaic, to make the most beautiful whole.

The description compares In The Watchful City to Catherynne Valente’s Palimpsest, and I get why – both books feature incredible, fantastical cities (and absolutely exquisite prose). But I think it would be more accurate to place it side by side with her Orphan’s Tales duology – which, if you haven’t read it, a) you should, and b) it’s a kind of Arabian Nights-style masterpiece made up of hundreds of interlocking stories. The stories in In The Watchful City don’t melt into each other in the same way, but this is still a story about stories, and about the human experience. What we have in common. What’s important. The ways we all find to matter, and all the different things ‘mattering’ can mean.

It’s just gorgeous. I know I’ve said that so many times, but that’s because it’s true, and because I don’t know how else to say it. In The Watchful City is one of the most beautiful books I’ve read in a long time, and it’s going to stay with me for a long time. I’m going to read it again, and I’ll probably read it again after that. I don’t want it to be over, and I can’t wait to see what Lu writes next, and you had better preorder your copy right now because darlings, this is one of 2021’s treasures and you don’t want to miss it.

The post Heartstoppingly Breathtaking: In The Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Too Many Side-Quests, Not Enough Epic: The Splinter King by Mike Brooks

UK cover (left) & US cover (right)The Splinter King (The God-King Chronicles, #2) by Mike Brooks
Representation: Gay MC, Nonbinary MCs, queernorm cultures, M/M or mlm, NB/NB
Published on: 15th July 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads

THE WORLD FRACTURES AS A DEAD GOD RISES . . .

Darel, dragon knight and the new leader of Black Keep, must travel to the palace of the God-King to beg for the lives of his people. But in the capital of Narida, Marin and his warrior husband will be drawn into a palace coup, and Princess Tila will resort to murder to keep her hold on power.

In the far reaches of the kingdom an heir in exile is hunted by assassins, rumours of a rival God-King abound, and daemonic forces from across the seas draw ever nearer...

A saga of truly epic proportions, The Splinter King is the captivating sequel to Mike Brooks' The Black Coast. A spectacular adventure featuring a large cast of dragon riders, royalty, knights and deities, this new series is an unmissable treat for any fantasy reader.

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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~excuse me sir, those are not dragons they are dinosaurs
~‘cease this foolishness and die quietly’ is a Vibe
~a society that meets in secret is a secret society, Marin
~don’t fight ‘well’, fight smart
~libraries are sexy

I really wasn’t sure what to expect from The Splinter King after the ending of book one, The Black Coast (and if you haven’t read Black Coast, please proceed no further, because spoilers!) Now that I’m finished, I’m in two minds about it.

I loved a lot of things about Black Coast (as you can see from my review), but the worldbuilding was definitely the winner for me: if you’ve been following this blog at all, it should be clear to you by now that there is no faster way to win my heart than by presenting me with truly excellent worldbuilding. Bonus points if it’s queer. And the God-King Chronicles gets those bonus points.

But The Splinter King is the second book in a series – in a trilogy, actually, according to one interview Brooks gave – which means I’m already familiar with the worldbuilding (bar some new, small bits and pieces introduced here and there). So it had to give me something else to make me love it.

…And it didn’t, really.

It’s a very readable book; I ended up reading about 70% of it in two days. The prose is perfectly pleasant and I liked most of the cast. But for the most part, it kind of felt like nothing really happened. Which is strange, because actually, too much was happening. Where most of the POVs of book one interacted with at least a few of the others – Sanna and Damien and Zhanna were all in Blackcreek, for example – here, they all got spread out. The result felt like every character had their own side-quest – most of which weren’t very interesting and weren’t really all that important to the story – and the book was completely lacking a central plot.

I’m used to books with lots of POVs; I didn’t have a problem following where everyone was and what they were doing. But I was…kind of bored. I kept waiting for the action to start, and it didn’t. When we did get an intense moment, it was immediately cut off by an edge-of-your-seat cliffhanger…and then there were three or four very bland chapters from other POVs, which meant that by the time we got back to the high-tension moment…the tension was gone.

When I finished The Splinter King earlier today, I was left thinking ‘what was the point?’ For the most part, the book felt very much like filler or padding. Quite a few of the different plotlines ended on impressive cliffhangers again at the end, and that was as exciting or interesting as they’ve been for the whole book. It reminds me of the show Supernatural, which I used to love but stopped watching long before it finally ended; they used to have pretty epic cliffhangers at the end of every season as well – and then the first episode of the next season was always a complete let-down.

Ultimately, I wanted to love this so badly – and I just didn’t. Even the enormous, huge, world-changing revelation-scene at the very end ended up being so completely underwhelming. The Splinter King never gave me goosebumps, never made the hairs on my arms stand up, never gave me those electric shivers you get when a line just resounds inside you. The worldbuilding is impressive, but wasn’t expanded upon enough from what we saw in book one to be interesting for its own sake. And every time I had an omg!!! moment, the book effectively punished me for it by then drowning me in chapter after chapter of stuff I could not care less about, so what should have been a roar turned into a whimper instead.

All of that said? I did enjoy the reading experience; I appreciate how easy it was to just keep turning the pages, and I do want to give points for the handful of very cool moments that we got (‘cease this foolishness and die quietly’ is a line I will not soon forget). That’s why I’m rating this as high as I am. But I’m no longer at all sure I’m going to be picking up the next book in the series.

The post Too Many Side-Quests, Not Enough Epic: The Splinter King by Mike Brooks appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Hopeless = Hope-Full: The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente

The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente
Published on: 20th July 2021
Genres: Sci Fi
ISBN: 1250301130
Goodreads

Catherynne M. Valente, the bestselling and award-winning creator of Space Opera and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland returns with The Past is Red, the enchanting, dark, funny, angry story of a girl who made two terrible mistakes: she told the truth and she dared to love the world.

The future is blue. Endless blue...except for a few small places that float across the hot, drowned world left behind by long-gone fossil fuel-guzzlers. One of those patches is a magical place called Garbagetown.

Tetley Abednego is the most beloved girl in Garbagetown, but she's the only one who knows it. She's the only one who knows a lot of things: that Garbagetown is the most wonderful place in the world, that it's full of hope, that you can love someone and 66% hate them all at the same time.

But Earth is a terrible mess, hope is a fragile thing, and a lot of people are very angry with her. Then Tetley discovers a new friend, a terrible secret, and more to her world than she ever expected.

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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~All hail St Oscar of the Trashcan
~sometimes you have to save the idiots from themselves
~a lot of the time, actually
~garbage is precious too

Depending on how you look at it, The Past Is Red is either incredibly depressing or incredibly hopeful – and I don’t think that’s an accident.

If you’ve read Valente’s anthology, The Future Is Blue, then you already know Tetley. If you haven’t, that’s okay – the short story the anthology is titled after is the first part of The Past Is Red, so in picking up this book, you have absolutely everything you need to fully appreciate it. And there is a lot to appreciate.

I don’t think that’s an accident either.

Rubbing a seal’s stomach is the opposite of nihilism.

Tetley lives in Garbagetown, a floating not-land inspired by the very real North Atlantic garbage patch. There may be a handful of other sea-drifting cities, and there’s at least one band of performers that travels back and forth between them, but for the most part humanity is gone – wiped out by environmental collapse and most especially risen sea levels.

There are some things you just can’t ever get back. Years. Gannet birds. Husbands. Antartica.

Or rather, wiped out by themselves, the Fuckwits – that’s us, by the way, you and me and we – whose gluttony and laziness and entitlement caused that collapse.

There is something bitterly hilarious in seeing the people of our time universally referred to as The Fuckwits; I remember genuinely laughing, the first time I read The Future Is Blue in 2018. Maybe it’s just the general malaise of *waves vaguely at everything*, but it felt much more bitter this time around. Still funny, but almost too on the nose when I’m feeling this raw about the state of the world.

Still accurate, though.

ANYway.

I don’t know how long it’s been since I loved a character as much as I love Tetley. I think most of us would consider it horrifically awful and depressing to be living on a giant garbage heap, but Tetley sees so much beauty in it that instead it feels almost like some fairytale realm. It’s a dissonance that reminds me of Room by Emma Donoghue, and other books with narrators who are not so much unreliable as genuinely don’t comprehend what’s going on. The reader can see how angry and bitter the people around Tetley are, how unhappy they are, but Tetley really and truly doesn’t get it, because to her, the world she has is beautiful. The world they have is beautiful. Yes, lots of things are hard or outright impossible now, but look at what they do have! It’s just stupid pointless greed to want more.

“the kind of hope I have isn’t just greed going by its maiden name. The kind of hope I have doesn’t begin and end with demanding everything go back to the way it was when it can’t, it can’t ever, that’s not how time works, and it’s not how oceans work, either.”

And people hate her for it.

But the thing is, she’s not wrong. I don’t know if you can choose to be happy, but you can definitely work on not constantly ruminating in the things that are gone and done, and it seems more sensible to me to look for joys – big or small – than to focus on all the reasons to be miserable. When we read about Candle Hole – the part of Garbagetown where all the candles ended up, where everyone’s home is multi-coloured and made out of hundreds of different melted candles – it’s magical, and if the other characters don’t see it that way… It’s a mindset issue, isn’t it? At least partly? A question of perspective? They and Tetley are both looking at the same thing. Why is it only beautiful to one of them?

What is it about humans – most of us, at least – that we look at so many things and just…immediately want them to be more? Why is it so hard to be happy with what you have, to delight in what you have, without a voice in the back of your mind whispering but it could be bigger, shinier, fancier? We resent having less even when what we have is enough.

Enough is enough.

“Goddammit, why am I the only one who knows things?”

Listen to Tetley, okay? Because she’s not simple, or slow, or stupid. She’s fucking brilliant. She’s dazzling. She is so brave and so strong and smarter than all of us. The hardest, most courageous thing in the world is not giving into despair, and she does not, will not, cannot.

We can’t either. It would be so easy – it would be understandable – but we can’t. Tetley loves Garbagetown enough to save it, looks at it and sees something beautiful and precious where everyone else sees ugliness and worthlessness. I said it’s not an accident that there’s a lot to appreciate in The Past Is Red and no, obviously it’s not, no writer deliberately tries to write a bad story – Valente sat down to write a good story on purpose – but what I meant was that there is so much to appreciate even though parts will make you flinch, or ache, or want to cry.

And that’s a pretty spot-on metaphor for the world, right there.

It’s very easy, for heartbreakingly many of us, to look at the world and see something ugly and worthless, to see a garbagetown – but damn it, it’s not. We need to look at it properly and see how beautiful it is, because it needs saving, and we need to save it.

Or any future humans who are left will be absolutely right to call us Fuckwits.

St. Oscar, keep your mighty lid closed over me. Look grouchily but kindly upon me and protect me as I travel through the infinite trashcan of your world. Show me the beautiful usefulness of your Blessed Rubbish. Let me not be Taken Out before I find my destiny.

This might be a hard book to read in a moment when you’re feeling raw, but there’s so much to love here. The Past Is Read is all love, in a lot of ways. It’s a lot of tongue-in-cheek. It’s houses made of candlewax and going on quests to find your name and the 8th-Best Daffodil and being the moon. It’s a middle-finger to our present and our future. It is not a promise that everything will be okay, but it is a promise that there will always be something wonderful if you look. It’s not a hug; it’s hands gripping your shoulders and shaking hard, hopefully shaking some sense into us. It’s those same hands touching your cheek to turn your head, pointing out all the things we have to love, everything that’s precious.

Demanding you take care of them.

Anarchy can be so cozy, if you bring enough pillows.

There’s something gut-punching on every page. There’s something to make you laugh, something wry and clever and poking fun around every corner. There’s something beautiful, even in the ugly parts.

The Past Is Red is an unequivocal condemnation of how humans are collectively dealing with the environmental crisis – but it’s also a book about optimism; about how you can find beauty in almost anything if you look hard enough, from the right angle. It’s whimsical and biting; despairing and delightful. It’s a story about how nothing’s fair. It’s a frustrated scream for people to just stop. It’s a stubbornly hopepunk little book…about the dangers of hope, when hope is just a mask for greed. It’s about the strange and wonderful forms human happiness can take. It’s about how having enough is enough, for the love of all the gods.

It’s a question:

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I want to be Tetley. Or at the very least, not a Fuckwit.

The Past Is Red releases July 20th, and honestly? You’d have to be a fuckwit not to grab yourself a copy.

The post Hopeless = Hope-Full: The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday #42!

This week we have EIGHT new SFF releases of note, with stories about superheroes and cryptozoologists and tea-monks galore!

Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge, Jeremy Tiang
Representation: Chinese MC and cast
Published on: 13th July 2021
Genres: Urban Fantasy
Goodreads

In the fictional Chinese town of Yong’an, human beings live alongside spirits and monsters, some of which are almost indistinguishable from people. Told in the form of a bestiary, each chapter of Strange Beasts introduces us to a new creature – from the Sacrificial Beasts, who can’t seem to stop dying, to the Besotted Beasts, an artificial breed engineered by scientists to be as loveable as possible. The narrator, an amateur cryptozoologist, is on a mission to track down each breed in turn, but in the process discovers that she might not be as human as she thought.

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I think this might have been available in the UK a while ago, but this week it’s finally coming to the states! I am so in love with the idea of an amateur cryptozoologist documenting strange beasties. Everything about this premise just ticks all my boxes. Strange Beasts of China is also a novel in translation – it was originally written in, you’ll never guess, Chinese – so I’m excited to read it for that reason too. I don’t read a lot of translated fiction, and I think I ought to read more!

Flash Fire (The Extraordinaries, #2) by T.J. Klune
Representation: Gay MC with ADHD, M/M, secondary F/F
Published on: 13th July 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Goodreads

Flash Fire is the explosive sequel to The Extraordinaries by USA Today bestselling author TJ Klune!

Nick landed himself the superhero boyfriend of his dreams, but with new heroes arriving in Nova City it’s up to Nick and his friends to determine who is virtuous and who is villainous. Which is a lot to handle for a guy who just wants to finish his self-insert bakery AU fanfic.

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The first book in this series, The Extraordinaries, was one of my most enjoyed reads of last year, and I can’t wait to dive back in to the story of these fabulous characters and their ridiculous antics!

Sword Stone Table: Old Legends, New Voices by Swapna Krishna, Jenn Northington, Alexander Chee, Preeti Chhibber, Roshani Chokshi, Sive Doyle, Maria Dahvana Headley, Ausma Zehanat Khan, Daniel M. Lavery, Ken Liu, Sarah MacLean, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Jessica Plummer, Anthony Rapp, Waubgeshig Rice, Alex Segura, Nisi Shawl, S. Zainab Williams
Representation: Various queer characters, various POC characters
Published on: 13th July 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads

Featuring stories by a bestselling, cross-genre assortment of the most exciting writers working today, an anthology of gender-bent, race-bent, LGBTQIA+, and inclusive retellings from the vast lore surrounding King Arthur, Camelot, and the Knights of the Round Table.

Here you'll find the Lady of the Lake reimagined as an albino Ugandan sorceress and the Lady of Shalott as a wealthy, isolated woman in futuristic Mexico City; you'll see Excalibur rediscovered as a baseball bat that grants a washed-up minor leaguer a fresh shot at glory and as a lost ceremonial drum that returns to a young First Nations boy the power and the dignity of his people. There are stories set in Gilded Age Chicago, '80s New York, twenty-first century Singapore, and space; there are lesbian lady knights, Arthur and Merlin reborn in the modern era for a second chance at saving the world and falling in love--even a coffee shop AU.

Brave, bold, and groundbreaking, the stories in Sword Stone Table will bring fresh life to beloved myths and give long-time fans a chance to finally see themselves in their favorite legends.

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I’m not gonna lie, I’m intensely interested in an Arthurian Coffee Shop AU! Who wouldn’t be?!

The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass
Representation: Black gay MC
Published on: 13th July 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Urban Fantasy
Goodreads

Get Out meets Danielle Vega in this YA horror where survival is not a guarantee.

Jake Livingston is one of the only Black kids at St. Clair Prep, one of the others being his infinitely more popular older brother. It’s hard enough fitting in but to make matters worse and definitely more complicated, Jake can see the dead. In fact he sees the dead around him all the time. Most are harmless. Stuck in their death loops as they relive their deaths over and over again, they don’t interact often with people.

But then Jake meets Sawyer. A troubled teen who shot and killed six kids at a local high school last year before taking his own life. Now a powerful, vengeful ghost, he has plans for his afterlife–plans that include Jake. Suddenly, everything Jake knows about ghosts and the rules to life itself go out the window as Sawyer begins haunting him and bodies turn up in his neighborhood. High school soon becomes a survival game–one Jake is not sure he’s going to win.

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This sounds genuinely disturbing – racism, homophobia, and school shooters?! – but even though I am officially a horror wimp, I really want to give it a go. That’s one hell of a morbidly intriguing premise!

A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1) by Becky Chambers
Representation: Agender MC, queernorm world
Published on: 13th July 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Goodreads

Hugo Award-winner Becky Chambers's delightful new series gives us hope for the future.

It's been centuries since the robots of Earth gained self-awareness and laid down their tools.Centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again.Centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.

One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered.

But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how.

They're going to need to ask it a lot.

Becky Chambers' new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?

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I got to review this one early, and it is sweet and soft, but brace yourself for Meaning of Life type questions. At least you’ll get to ponder them alongside reading about lovely tea-monks!

Three Seeking Stars (Sãoni Cycle, #2) by Avi Silver
Representation: Original gender system, genderfluid, nonbinary
Published on: 13th July 2021
Goodreads

Sohmeng Minhal is going to fix the world.

With her home still in jeopardy, she doesn’t have much choice. What she does have is Ahnschen, an endearing prince of the dangerous empire that is disrupting the sãoni migration route. If she can convince Hei to trust him long enough to safely return him to his people, Sohmeng might just have a chance of restoring balance to Eiji. That is, until an unexpected piece of her past emerges from the jungle and challenges everything she is trying to achieve.

Now, the future of Eiji rests in Ahn’s hands—but does he have the courage to face the harm inflicted by his people? Determined to do right by the beloved friend who died on his sword, it will take a lot of unlearning to prove to Eiji—and to Hei—that he can, in fact, be good.

In the second chapter of the Sãoni Cycle, Sohmeng, Hei, and Ahn must reconcile their places in the human and natural worlds, all while navigating their complicated feelings about one another.

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PLEASE do not jump into Three Seeking Stars before reading the first book in the series, Two Dark Moons – but I have to highly recommend this series; I am just so in love with the worldbuilding, and the main character is just wonderful. It’s also hella queer, and there are giant lizards. WIN!

The Fallen (The Outside, #2) by Ada Hoffmann
Representation: Sapphic autistic MC, sapphic MC, F/F or wlw, secondary nonbinary characters, genderfluid POV character, pansexual POV character
Published on: 13th July 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Goodreads

The laws of physics acting on the planet of Jai have been forever upended; its surface completed altered, and its inhabitants permanently changed. The artificially intelligent Gods that ruled the galaxy, fearing heresy and chaos, have become the planet’s jailers. Tiv Hunt once trusted these Gods absolutely, but now her world has changed and her allegiance has shifted.

Now Tiv spends her days helping the last remaining survivors of Jai. Everyone is fighting for their freedom against unthinkable odds, and they call out for drastic action from their saviour, Yasira. But she has become deeply ill, debilitated by her Outside exposure, and she struggles to keep breathing let alone lead a revolution.

Hunted by the Gods, and Akavi, the disgraced angel, Yasira and Tiv them must delve further than ever before into the maddening mysteries of their fractured planet in order to save – or perhaps destroy – their fading world.

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This is the sequel to the incredible 2019 sci-fi The Outside, and while you definitely need to read that first, I can confirm that this second installment is also freaking excellent! This series is what you want if you’ve been looking for unique worldbuilding, great autism and queer rep, and a very different kind of hero.

The Splinter King (The God-King Chronicles, #2) by Mike Brooks
Representation: Nonbinary MCs, Gay MC, queernorm world
Published on: 15th July 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Epic Fantasy
Goodreads

THE WORLD FRACTURES AS A DEAD GOD RISES . . .

Darel, dragon knight and the new leader of Black Keep, must travel to the palace of the God-King to beg for the lives of his people. But in the capital of Narida, Marin and his warrior husband will be drawn into a palace coup, and Princess Tila will resort to murder to keep her hold on power.

In the far reaches of the kingdom an heir in exile is hunted by assassins, rumours of a rival God-King abound, and daemonic forces from across the seas draw ever nearer...

A saga of truly epic proportions, The Splinter King is the captivating sequel to Mike Brooks' The Black Coast. A spectacular adventure featuring a large cast of dragon riders, royalty, knights and deities, this new series is an unmissable treat for any fantasy reader.

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Americans need to wait a few more months, but for those in the UK the sequel to Black Coast is out this week! Black Coast is already on my best-of-the-year list; I can’t believe we get to have a sequel in the same year as book one! We’re being spoiled. This is a series with feathered dragons, different kinds of normalised queerness, a very compelling cast, and something epic building up in the background like a tidal wave. I suspect some of it’s going to come crashing down in this book!

That’s all I’ve got for this week! Did I miss any new releases I should know about? Will you be reading any of these? Let me know!

The post Must-Have Monday #42! appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

No Kind of Person is Broken: The Fallen by Ada Hoffman

The Fallen (The Outside, #2) by Ada Hoffmann
Representation: Sapphic autistic MC, sapphic MC, F/F or wlw, secondary nonbinary characters, genderfluid PoV character, pansexual MC, queernorm world
Published on: 13th July 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
ISBN: 0857668684
Goodreads

The laws of physics acting on the planet of Jai have been forever upended; its surface completed altered, and its inhabitants permanently changed. The artificially intelligent Gods that ruled the galaxy, fearing heresy and chaos, have become the planet’s jailers. Tiv Hunt once trusted these Gods absolutely, but now her world has changed and her allegiance has shifted.

Now Tiv spends her days helping the last remaining survivors of Jai. Everyone is fighting for their freedom against unthinkable odds, and they call out for drastic action from their saviour, Yasira. But she has become deeply ill, debilitated by her Outside exposure, and she struggles to keep breathing let alone lead a revolution.

Hunted by the Gods, and Akavi, the disgraced angel, Yasira and Tiv them must delve further than ever before into the maddening mysteries of their fractured planet in order to save – or perhaps destroy – their fading world.

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

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~but why do you want weapons
~hiveminds
~magic portal-doors are very convenient
~Strike Team gets shit done
~#EluStillDeservesBetter

This review contains spoilers for book one in the series, The Outside!

When I read The Outside for the first time, I believed it was a standalone – it had an ending that wrapped up the main story, but left enough room that the reader could be satisfied that Life Would Go On once the final page was turned. I adored it and was perfectly happy with that ending.

But it wasn’t a standalone, we got more story, and it is freaking awesome!

Which is maybe a weird thing to say, because The Fallen is a much grimmer book than The Outside was. The Outside was about fighting a clear enemy, more or less (although it ended up being far more complicated than that, because Hoffman is brilliant and doesn’t talk down to her readers), whereas The Fallen is…the aftermath.

And the aftermath isn’t very pretty.

Yasira saved a lot of lives at the end of the previous book by mitigating the worst effects of the Chaos Zone – a fifth of the planet Jai, which Talirr, Yasira’s once-mentor, infected with the forces of the Outside. But in doing so, she made herself an enemy of the AI Gods who rule human space – and broke herself on a fundamental level. What at first looks like severe trauma and depression is soon revealed to be something much more arcane and harder to heal – maybe impossible to fix.

Yasira’s current psychological state is at complete odds with her reputation. The people of the Chaos Zone now call her Saviour, and although she hasn’t appeared in public since her miracle, there’s more than a little hero worship going on. But it’s Tiv – Yasira’s girlfriend – who’s been nicknamed Leader; not of any kind of resistance group, exactly, but of the small team of Talirr’s ex-students who use their various Outside abilities to help the people of the Chaos Zone as much as they can. Tiv herself doesn’t have any powers – at least, not any Outside ones; I’d argue that her empathy, compassion, and hopepunk-style optimism definitely count as superpowers. Especially since she’s co-ordinating a number of nuerodiverse and traumatised people, which is like herding cats on a good day.

We didn’t get to see a lot of Tiv in the previous book – although what we saw, I liked – and it was really wonderful that she got to be front-and-centre in The Fallen. In The Outside, we heard Yasira repeatedly refer to Tiv as a ‘good girl’, but I don’t think Yasira really comprehended how accurate that is; Yasira meant that Tiv was a rule-follower, both in the social, cultural sense and in the religious sense, but Tiv actually is a ridiculously good person. If I hadn’t encountered one or two people like her before in my life, I’m not sure I’d have bought into the character, she’s that wonderful. She’s not impossibly perfect, it’s not that she can accomplish everything she sets her mind to and easily overcome everything the world is throwing at her: it’s just that she is unspeakably, unstintingly kind, even when she’s under an incredible amount of pressure. She’s always considerate, never forgets what those around her might find triggering, is gentle even when things are difficult. When she’s tired or frustrated or scared, she mostly manages to keep it to herself. She’s always looking to lighten the load of others. It’s just kind of amazing to read.

And I think it was an excellent narrative choice to feature Tiv, because she is someone who really did believe that the Gods were good. She is still, despite everything, anti-violence. When the people her team are helping start asking for weapons, she refuses. She’s not the kind of character I’m used to seeing in situations like these, and in some way I can’t define, that made it all more real to me. In many ways, Tiv is the ideal person, and so seeing how she navigated the riptides they’re in… It’s just different to see a character with such strong principles and with so much compassion not just in a leadership role, but also facing an immense enemy and an impossible situation. The Gods want them all destroyed, the angels are shooting and kidnapping people…and Tiv grits her teeth and refuses to despair. Refuses to be grimly practical and turn passive resistance into a war.

It’s just…kind of awesome?

Of course, there are many people who disagree with her, and it’s not hard to understand why some people are asking for weapons, why others are demanding that they fight back. It’s really easy to sympathise with them! But I had a bit of a galaxy-brain moment when Tiv decided the team’s response to requests for weaponry would be ‘Why?’

“What do you want them for?”

…”Defense, of course. Weren’t you listening?”

…”No, I mean, what are your objectives. I’m going to be honest with you, Mr. Akiujal, people have been asking us for weapons more and more and we’re starting to want to know why. I know that you fear for your safety, but that’s not enough reason by itself. What are you planning to defend – a location? A group of people? A team while they do a specific task?”

It’s probably a bad sign that it sounds so revolutionary for someone to just ask why do you want weapons? We all just kind of understand that in scary situations, we want guns. I’ve never seen someone question that, but once I read it, I realised that most of the time – at least in fiction – we’re not presented with an objective. Usually there is no specific, carefully-thought-out reason why. People want weapons because weapons make them feel safe, not because they necessarily know how to use them or what to do with them.

That…feels like a very big thing. It feels like something we should all be thinking a lot about, now.

In the case of the Chaos Zone, weapons aren’t really going to be much help: the angels guarding the borders can’t be properly hurt by human weapons, and the Outside monsters – well, they’re not indestructible, but good luck guessing what will hurt them. And the monsters aren’t the real issue, anyway. Not really.

It’s the other monsters, the ones that call themselves Gods and angels, that are the real problem. And I really did love learning more about them in this book – even if what I learned just grew more and more horrifying. When I reviewed The Outside, I said that I didn’t think humanity was living in a dystopia; I’m not 100% sure I still believe that, now I know more about how they operate. Granted, most of what we see is focussed on Nemesis, who has been presented as The Scary God from page one – but I’m going to need some evidence that the other Gods don’t work the same way before I give them a pass.

Is it a dystopia if the awfulness is happening out of sight of most civilians? What does it mean, that most of us can be perfectly happy to keep living our lives while terrible things go on? While we know they go on? That’s not just a question for the humans in Hoffman’s stories; that’s a question for all of us.

The Outside began with a single enemy, and a mission to stop her (Talirr). It grew more complicated than that, but that’s where we were when the book started. The Fallen isn’t that simple at any point. The enemy now isn’t a single human woman; it’s the Gods themselves, and they are just too big and too powerful to fight. It’s hopeless, and it makes for some grim reading.

But The Fallen is very much about hope: the bitter, grit-your-teeth kind of hopepunk. The Chaos Zone isn’t a utopia in the sense that life is anything like easy there – it isn’t. But there’s something very utopian about the way the people there have come together. Over and over again, it’s emphasised how the Chaos Zone has pulled together; how people share what they have and contribute as much as they can contribute. How, even if they grumble and mutter about it, they pull in and help each other; to repair roofs, to treat injuries, to have enough to eat. It’s heartwarming, and no, I don’t think it’s unbelievable. Historically, this is very much how people in disaster zones behave; humans don’t revert to club-carrying cavemen when things go bad, no matter what the general media tries to say. You can check out Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman for more about that, if you like.

To get back to my point: The Fallen is a story about how to fight when you can’t fight. It’s a story about different kinds of resistance. It’s a story about losing faith and finding it again in something else – in each other, instead of in computer gods. The situation the characters are in, in The Fallen, seems hopeless, but Hoffman’s story is about holding on to hope anyway. About working together to make things a little bit easier, a little bit better, for everyone. And even, I think, about how there’s no such thing as a broken person. There’s just different kinds of people, who can do and contribute different things, and that’s okay.

The Fallen releases this coming Tuesday. I think you ought to read it. (Just make sure you’ve read The Outside first!)

The post No Kind of Person is Broken: The Fallen by Ada Hoffman appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Addictive, Autistic, Awesome: The Outside by Ada Hoffman

The Outside by Ada Hoffmann
Representation: Sapphic autistic MC, F/F or wlw, genderfluid PoV character
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
ISBN: 0857668137
Goodreads

Humanity's super-intelligent AI Gods brutally punish breaches in reality, as one young scientist discovers, in this intense and brilliant space opera.
Autistic scientist Yasira Shien has developed a radical new energy drive that could change the future of humanity. But when she activates it, reality warps, destroying the space station and everyone aboard. The AI Gods who rule the galaxy declare her work heretical, and Yasira is abducted by their agents. Instead of simply executing her, they offer mercy - if she'll help them hunt down a bigger target: her own mysterious, vanished mentor. With her homeworld's fate in the balance, Yasira must choose who to trust: the gods and their ruthless post-human angels, or the rebel scientist whose unorthodox mathematics could turn her world inside out.

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~And you thought Terminator had scary AIs
~Prayers through the internet
~never trust an angel
~there’s a protocol for monsters under the bed
~#EluDeservesBetter

I’ve been trying to write a review for The Outside since I first read it two years ago. It’s a tough one for me to talk about, both because I have no idea where to start when it comes to describing all the awesomeness that is this book – and there is a lot of it – and because it was the first time I saw a canonically-autistic main character since I was diagnosed myself. So discovering this book, reading it, loving it – the whole process was much more personal for me than connecting with a book usually is. Besides being a really, really great story, it gave me a lot of food for thought.

The blurb for this one leaves quite a lot out: Yasira is indeed autistic, is indeed a scientist – but she didn’t come up with the Shien reactor on her own. She only co-authored the paper that led to the reactor’s construction – her co-author being Dr Talirr, who was also her mentor during Yasira’s doctoral studies. When a bunch of people decided they wanted to actually build a reactor based on the physics in that paper, they wanted Talirr. But Talirr had vanished without explanation by then, so they accepted Yasira.

This is all important.

The reactor itself is hugely important for all of humanity, because in the future Hoffman has created, human technology is what we would consider embarrassingly limited. This is because the Gods – incredibly huge, complex, and powerful AIs who run human civilisation – don’t trust humanity with more than basic calculators and boxy television sets. Which is kind of fair, because humans destroyed Old Earth with their technology, and only the rise of the Gods saved them from also destroying themselves.

If the reactor works, it will enable humans to build and power the first not-God-built space station. It’s a big deal.

And then it goes wrong. It goes wrong, because Talirr was using – and teaching Yasira – math that isn’t really math. Science that isn’t really science. The best word is probably ‘magic’, but that’s not right either. Call it a system that utilises principles of quantum physics…but with monsters.

Kind of.

Here is a workingman’s understanding of quantum physics: it says that below everything, atoms and molecules and everything else, everything is just energy. There is no difference between you and me or the keyboard I’m typing this with or the screen you’re reading it on. All of it is energy. When you break everything down, it’s all just – energy.

Talirr says that time is a lie. Space is a lie. Life is a lie. And the thing that is so mind-breaking about this book – about Talirr’s practices – is that she’s not wrong. On a quantum level, time and space and life don’t really exist. Except that they simultaneously do, right, because we experience them. On our level, time and space and life absolutely exist.

Talirr isn’t very interested in our level. She is much more interested in the Bigger Picture. Zoom out far enough, and none of us exist. And on that level of reality, There Be Monsters.

When the reactor destroys the space station, Yasira is taken away by angels of the goddess Nemesis – the goddess who hunts down evildoers and heretics, and don’t let her hear you questioning whether those are the same thing – because they believe that she might be able to help them. She understands Talirr’s ‘science’ well enough to build the reactor. Does she understand it enough to stop her mentor – who is doing her best to break reality?

The worldbuilding is so unbelievably fascinating. The Gods in particular, the whole concept of them, I just adore. I suspect the idea of worshipping AIs has been done before, but Hoffman has co-opted religious language and ceremony in wickedly clever ways; the angels, for example, are cyborgs, human flesh + God-crafted technology – but they’re still called angels. There are still religious services and prayers – it’s even a fundamental fact that human souls exist, because somehow, when you die your soul is sorted and taken by the appropriate God (they all have different preferences; this one takes artists, that one takes engineers, etc). Without souls, the Gods would cease to be Gods, would become some kind of less powerful and complex AI. It’s not at all clear how dead souls get to the gods – at first I thought it was a kind of brain-scan, a reconstruction of a deceased person’s personality, but no, it’s something much more ephemeral than that. I hope sooner or later it becomes clearer how that all works, but regardless, it’s a very unique, fascinating touch. Yasira – and through her, the reader – encounter unbelievably advanced technology as she works with the angels (because the Gods keep all the good toys for themselves), but bringing souls into it is…a different sort of sci-fi. Maybe bucking sci fi conventions completely. That one, relatively small detail – the existence of souls – is enough all by itself to make the world of The Outside something very, very different from anything you might expect.

But even without that detail, the universe Yasira lives in is incredible. Far from perfect – this isn’t any kind of utopia, although I wouldn’t describe it as a dystopia either; most civilians are perfectly content living normal, happy-enough lives. But…humans live across multiple planets in this future. There are spaceships and portals and cyborg-angels. There’s the relationship between the Gods and humans. And humans still aren’t a monolith; different countries, never mind different planets, have different opinions on nuerodivergence, structure their families in different ways, etc. It’s all incredibly new and interesting, but it also feels absolutely real.

Also realistic is the complete lack of easy answers. Nemesis and her angels are very far from benevolent, and Yasira has a pretty hard time figuring out whether helping them is actually the right thing to do. Talirr is going around breaking bigger and bigger pieces of reality – causing incredible suffering to the people affected – but Nemesis’ approach is to burn and salt the earth of the infected affected areas. Including all survivors.

So whose side is Yasira supposed to be on?

Yasira is a character who finally makes complete sense to me. It’s not at all that all autistic people are alike, but I’ve got to admit, I struggle to understand the motivations and actions of nuerotypicals sometimes. I never had that problem with Yasira. I don’t know how nuerotypical readers will find her, but the way her mind worked just made sense. And that’s such a huge relief, to find people – even fictional people! – who reason the same way I do. I didn’t always agree with Yasira, but I always got her, and that means more than I can say.

On a bigger-picture level, I feel like Hoffman’s presentation of autism combats some pretty big, dangerous stereotypes. Dr Talirr is also autistic, and in perceiving Outside – the reality of reality, the fact that time/space/life is a lie, everything is only energy – her takeaway is that, since other people are just energy, killing them doesn’t matter. And a big horrible stereotype about autism is that autistic people don’t – or worse, are unable to – care about others; their feelings, their existence, their lives. But countering Talirr’s assertions that life is a lie, we have Yasira. Yasira who is also autistic, who can also make some kind of sense of Outside – and yet does not at all think that ‘we are all just energy’ means it’s fine to kill people. Talirr’s perspective, it is clear, comes more from her trauma at the hands of the Gods – who tried their best to beat her perception of Outside out of her when she was a child – than anything else. It’s not because she’s autistic. Hells, even without talking about Outside at all, when the book stars, we see Yasira in a happy relationship with her girlfriend Tiv – whom she thinks about a great deal, and cares about infinitely, throughout the book, even though they spend most of the story separated. Autism doesn’t mean you’re incapable of caring. Fucking trauma, on the other hand, flat-out abuse, can definitely twist a person up. That’s what Talirr suffered, and that’s why she is the way she is.

It just. Means a lot to me, that Hoffman underscores that point very, very hard: autism doesn’t make you immoral. It doesn’t mean you can’t love people. It doesn’t mean you can’t care about abstract strangers you’ve never met. It doesn’t, gods forbid, mean you think killing people is a non-issue!

This isn’t the epic, beautiful review I wanted to write. I’ve been trying to get my feelings about this book down for two years, and I think I have to accept I’m never going to manage it, not in as pretty a package as I’d like. But this is a brilliantly original sci-fi, with a viciously compelling story, great autistic rep, and a cast so interesting it’s hard to hate the characters you’re meant to hate.

I adore it, and I hope you’ll give it a try, because I think you will too.

The post Addictive, Autistic, Awesome: The Outside by Ada Hoffman appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Sweet but Not Serene: A Psalm For the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1) by Becky Chambers
Representation: Nonbinary MC, queernorm world
Published on: 13th July 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
ISBN: 1250236215
Goodreads

In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Hugo Award-winner Becky Chambers's delightful new Monk & Robot series gives us hope for the future.

It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.

One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered.

But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how.

They're going to need to ask it a lot.

Becky Chambers's new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?

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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~tea-monks!!!
~solarpunk ftw
~robots are the sweetest
~why not let crickets determine your life-choices???

I’ve got to be honest: I don’t feel like I have anything very special to say about Psalm. If you’re at all familiar with Becky Chambers, then you don’t need me to tell you about her signature feel-good factor and thoughtfulness and optimism. Or her wonderful worldbuilding, or her characters who always manage to steal your heart when you’re not looking!

I think the only thing that really needs emphasising is: Psalm is not the Wayfarers series. I don’t think everyone who loved Wayfarers will love Psalm, and I think a lot of those who do love both will love them for different reasons. It’s so easy to hope or assume that books by the same author will be the same, but they’re often not. This is one of those times.

For one thing, Psalm is even more small-scale than any of the Wayfarer books; instead of being focussed on a small group of characters, Psalm is all about Dex, a nonbinary monk (they/them) who decides one day that they want a change in career. Nothing super obvious sets off this decision, although Dex, charmingly, attributes it to the desire to hear the sounds of crickets. But they live in a very utopian, solarpunk society, and their superiors don’t mind at all that Dex now wants to be a travelling monk, making routes between villages and towns…to offer people tea.

Straight-up: all my years living in England could not make me like tea. But the idea of tea is still warm and lovely and soothing, and it is warm and lovely and soothing here. Dex really doesn’t know what they’re doing at first, but it’s heartbreakingly endearing – and once they do figure out what they’re doing, they kind of rock at it.

And then they meet…a robot.

Chambers has basically written a small, quiet meditation on the idea of human purpose: what we mean when we talk about it, where we get our ideas about it, how much it matters, how we’re supposed to find it. Dex insists that their world is not perfect, but it seems pretty perfect, and everyone’s basic needs are more than met – meaning that finding purpose is even more important than it might be otherwise. People who have to break their backs working don’t have the time, energy or resources to ponder their purpose, or go looking for one; in Dex’s world, where life is very comfortable, finding a purpose is much more vital. And you can kind of see why: humans get bored and fretful if we don’t have things to do. We think a lot – maybe too much. And if we don’t have to think about work and rent and groceries…? Then yes, a lot of us start to think about whether we matter, and what we should do so that we do matter, if we don’t. Etc. Or, if it’s not about mattering, then it’s about feeling fulfilled. Or happy – happy all the time.

It reminds me of something Chef thinks, in the very first Wayfarer book, A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet;

Humans’ preoccupation with ‘being happy’ was something he had never been able to figure out. No sapient could sustain happiness all of the time, just as no one could live permanently within anger, or boredom, or grief.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built, then, feels a bit like someone asked Chambers: but why can’t humans be happy all the time? And this novella is a little bit of an answer. It’s a sideways answer, and it’s not a whole answer; most of the novella is setting up the question, building up to it. And the answer is really another question. But it’s still an answer.

All in all? This is a quiet, sweet little story with a surprising bite when you’re least expecting it, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll keep thinking about it long after you finish it.

The post Sweet but Not Serene: A Psalm For the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday #41!

I didn’t do a Must-Have Monday post last week, because there just weren’t that many releases to get excited over (that I knew about, anyway). But this week more than makes up for it! We have NINE new books to feature, ranging from Arthurian retellings to a magical queer treasure hunt!

Summer in the City of Roses by Michelle Ruiz Keil
on 6th July 2021
Genres: Magical Realism
Goodreads

Inspired by the Greek myth of Iphigenia and the Grimm fairy tale “Brother and Sister,” Michelle Ruiz Keil’s second novel follows two siblings torn apart and struggling to find each other in early ’90s Portland.

All her life, seventeen-year-old Iph has protected her sensitive younger brother, Orr. But this summer, with their mother gone at an artist residency, their father decides it’s time for fifteen-year-old Orr to toughen up at a wilderness boot camp. When he brings Iph to a work gala in downtown Portland and breaks the news, Orr has already been sent away. Furious at his betrayal, Iph storms off and gets lost in the maze of Old Town. Enter George, a queer Robin Hood who swoops in on a bicycle, bow and arrow at the ready, offering Iph a place to hide out while she figures out how to track down Orr.

Orr, in the meantime, has escaped the camp and fallen in with The Furies, an all-girl punk band, and moves into the coat closet of their ramshackle pink house. In their first summer apart, Iph and Orr must learn to navigate their respective new spaces of music, romance, and sex work activism—and find each other to try to stop a transformation that could fracture their family forever.

Told through a lens of magical realism and steeped in myth, Summer in the City of Roses is a dazzling tale about the pain and beauty of growing up.

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Keil’s debut had really gorgeous prose, and I would really like some more of it, please and thank you. I’m officially Tired of Greek mythology, but I’m willing to give it a go when it’s an urban, magical-realism retelling. And a queer Robin Hood?! Hells yes!

What We Devour by Linsey Miller
Representation: Asexual MC
on 6th July 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Secondary World Fantasy
Goodreads

From the author of Mask of Shadows comes a dark and intricate story of a girl who must tether herself to a violent ruler to save her crumbling world.

Lorena Adler has a secret—she holds the power of the banished gods, the Noble and the Vile, inside her. She has spent her entire life hiding from the world and her past. She’s content to spend her days as an undertaker in a small town, marry her best friend, Julian, and live an unfulfilling life so long as no one uncovers her true nature.

But when the notoriously bloodthirsty and equally Vile crown prince comes to arrest Julian’s father, he immediately recognizes Lorena for what she is. So she makes a deal—a fair trial for her betrothed’s father in exchange for her service to the crown.

The prince is desperate for her help. He’s spent years trying to repair the weakening Door that holds back the Vile…and he’s losing the battle. As Lorena learns more about the Door and the horrifying price it takes to keep it closed, she’ll have to embrace both parts of herself to survive.

“A triumphant dark fantasy, What We Devour serves up an incredibly smart magic system with a side of eat-the-rich energy.” —Rosiee Thor, author of Tarnished Are the Stars

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This seems to be an either love-it-or-hate-it book from the early reviews, but an asexual protagonist stuck with a messed-up magic system? I’m intrigued. And let’s be fair: Miller’s books have been pretty stellar so far!

It Ends in Fire by Andrew Shvarts
Representation: Bi/pansexual MC, queer side character/s
on 6th July 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Urban Fantasy
Goodreads

ALKA CHELRAZI IS ON A MISSION:

1. Infiltrate Blackwater Academy
2. Win the Great Game
3. Burn Wizard society to the ground

As a child, Alka witnessed her parents' brutal murder at the hands of Wizards before she was taken in by an underground rebel group.

Now, Alka is deep undercover at the most prestigious school of magic in the Republic: Blackwater Academy, a place where status is everything, where decadent galas end in blood-splattered duels, where every student has their own agenda. To survive, Alka will have to lie, cheat, kill, and use every trick in her spy's toolkit. And for the first time in her life, the fiercely independent Alka will have to make friends in order to recruit the misfits and the outcasts into her motley rebellion.

But even as she draws closer to victory — to vengeance — she sinks deeper into danger as suspicious professors and murderous rivals seek the traitor in their midst, and dark revelations unravel her resolve. Can Alka destroy the twisted game...without becoming a part of it?

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I keep seeing this described as ‘girl Harry Potter out to burn down Hogwarts’ so, you know, you have my attention???

There's Magic Between Us by Jillian Maria
Representation: Pansexual MC, lesbian love interest, F/F or wlw
on 6th July 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Urban Fantasy
Goodreads

A diehard city girl, 16-year-old Lydia Barnes is reluctant to spend a week in her grandma’s small town. But hidden beneath Fairbrooke’s exterior of shoddy diners and empty farms, there’s a forest that calls to her. In it, she meets Eden: blunt, focused, and fascinating. She claims to be hunting fae treasure, and while Lydia laughs it off at first, it quickly becomes obvious that Eden’s not joking—magic is real.

Lydia joins the treasure hunt, thrilled by all the things it offers her. Things like endless places in the forest to explore and a friendship with Eden that threatens to blossom into something more. But even as she throws herself into her new adventure, some questions linger. Why did her mom keep magic a secret? Why do most of the townspeople act like the forest is evil? It seems that, as much as Lydia would like to pretend otherwise, not everything in Fairbrooke is as bright and easy as a new crush…

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This sounds very light-hearted (and has a really lovely feel-good cover too) but apparently it actually gets darker as it goes along, as the mystery around the treasure comes to light. And honestly, I absolutely love what I’ve heard about the MC; it sounds like Maria’s dialogue is really on-point, and I am here for disaster pansexuals!

City of Iron and Dust by J.P. Oakes
on 6th July 2021
Genres: Fantasy
Goodreads

In this fast-paced dark fantasy debut, the Fae seek to rebel against their Goblin oppressors over one long bloody night.

The Iron City is a prison, a maze, an industrial blight. It is the result of a war that saw the Goblins grind the Fae beneath their collective boot heels. And tonight, it is also a city that churns with life. Tonight, a young fae is trying to make his fortune one drug deal at a time; a goblin prince is searching for a path between his own dreams and others' expectations; his bodyguard is deciding who to kill first; an artist is hunting for her own voice; an old soldier is starting a new revolution; a young rebel is finding fresh ways to fight; and an old woman is dreaming of reclaiming her power over them all. Tonight, all their stories are twisting together, wrapped up around a single bag of Dust--the only drug that can still fuel Fae magic--and its fate and theirs will change the Iron City forever.

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This one seems to be another love-it-or-hate-it, with a lot of early readers head-over-hells for the setting, and others unconvinced by the cast. I won’t know which side I’m on until I read it, but I do think the premise is great.

Six Crimson Cranes (Six Crimson Cranes, #1) by Elizabeth Lim
on 6th July 2021
Genres: Fantasy
Goodreads

Shiori, the only princess of Kiata, has a secret. Forbidden magic runs through her veins. Normally she conceals it well, but on the morning of her betrothal ceremony, Shiori loses control. At first, her mistake seems like a stroke of luck, forestalling the wedding she never wanted, but it also catches the attention of Raikama, her stepmother.

Raikama has dark magic of her own, and she banishes the young princess, turning her brothers into cranes, and warning Shiori that she must speak of it to no one: for with every word that escapes her lips, one of her brothers will die.

Penniless, voiceless, and alone, Shiori searches for her brothers, and, on her journey, uncovers a conspiracy to overtake the throne—a conspiracy more twisted and deceitful, more cunning and complex, than even Raikama's betrayal. Only Shiori can set the kingdom to rights, but to do so she must place her trust in the very boy she fought so hard not to marry. And she must embrace the magic she's been taught all her life to contain—no matter what it costs her.

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I suspect I won’t be able to read this, just because The Six Swans (the fairytale Lim’s drawn inspiration from) is too close to the Irish Children of Lir myth, which is tangled up with some childhood memories I don’t want to deal with. It’s a ridiculously gorgeous cover, though!

Half Sick of Shadows by Laura Sebastian
on 6th July 2021
Genres: Fantasy
Goodreads

The Lady of Shalott reclaims her story in this bold feminist reimagining of the Arthurian myth from the New York Times bestselling author of Ash Princess.

Everyone knows the legend. Of Arthur, destined to be a king. Of the beautiful Guinevere, who will betray him with his most loyal knight, Lancelot. Of the bitter sorceress, Morgana, who will turn against them all. But Elaine alone carries the burden of knowing what is to come--for Elaine of Shalott is cursed to see the future.

On the mystical isle of Avalon, Elaine runs free and learns of the ancient prophecies surrounding her and her friends--countless possibilities, almost all of them tragic.

When their future comes to claim them, Elaine, Guinevere, Lancelot, and Morgana accompany Arthur to take his throne in stifling Camelot, where magic is outlawed, the rules of society chain them, and enemies are everywhere. Yet the most dangerous threats may come from within their own circle.

As visions are fulfilled and an inevitable fate closes in, Elaine must decide how far she will go to change fate--and what she is willing to sacrifice along the way.

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Someone declared Sebastian the ‘next Madeline Miller’ based on this book, so I’m assuming this is going to be ridiculously awesome. And I’m always up for feminist retellings of Arthurian myth!

The Empire's Ruin (Ashes of the Unhewn Throne, #1) by Brian Staveley
on 6th July 2021
Genres: Epic Fantasy
Goodreads

Brian Staveley, author of The Emperor's Blades, gives readers the first book in a new epic fantasy trilogy based in the world of his popular series the Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, The Empire's Ruin.

The Annurian Empire is disintegrating. The advantages it used for millennia have fallen to ruin. The ranks of the Kettral have been decimated from within, and the kenta gates, granting instantaneous travel across the vast lands of the empire, can no longer be used.

In order to save the empire, one of the surviving Kettral must voyage beyond the edge of the known world through a land that warps and poisons all living things to find the nesting ground of the giant war hawks. Meanwhile, a monk turned con-artist may hold the secret to the kenta gates.

But time is running out. Deep within the southern reaches of the empire and ancient god-like race has begun to stir.

What they discover will change them and the Annurian Empire forever. If they can survive.

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DON’T pick this up unless you’ve already read the first trilogy, Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne! I mean yes, you could dive in here if you wanted to – Staveley has enough in place to give readers new to the series their bearings – but things will make much more sense, and pack a lot more of a punch, if you have the whole backstory. Empire’s Ruin takes place something like ten years after the end of the previous trilogy, and it’s freaking excellent. I couldn’t finish my early copy because I apparently can’t deal with grimdark at the moment (which this isn’t, quite, but it’s very close?) but I read enough to know that it’s easily as brilliant as the first trilogy.

Winged: A Unicorn Queen Novel by Michelle Guerrero
on 10th July 2021
Genres: Portal Fantasy
Goodreads

Seventeen-year-old Tessa O’Sullivan has no idea magic exists. She figures she’s having a rough year plagued with black-outs, memory loss, and sleep deprivation. She doesn’t know her true self is bound in human form because the ancients punished her for defying them or that she ticked off a god who’s bent on destroying her.

When Tessa’s family disappears, she’s thrust into a world of magic and deadly curses with two boys. Musician Cyrus Burns may be her soulmate, or a thief sent to destroy her with a kiss. And Cyrus’s enemy Edric is a family friend, who also happens to be a powerful Elven King. He’s Tessa’s former lover from a past life and wants to keep her safe, even at the expense of her freedom.

Trusting either of them is impossible when they’re both keeping dangerous secrets. If Tessa doesn’t save her family, they’ll be lost forever, and she’ll be pulled, hooves kicking, into the underworld for all eternity. She’s about to learn as an immortal unicorn queen, there are some fates worse than death.

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I know almost nothing about this, except that apparently, unicorns feature. For that alone, I’m willing to give it a try. WE DON’T GET ENOUGH UNICORN BOOKS, OKAY?

That’s a wrap! Will you be reading any of these? Did I miss some release I should know about? Let me know!

The post Must-Have Monday #41! appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

2021 Mid-Year Freak Out Book Tag

I had a ton of fun with this last year, so of course I jumped on it again! Basically a round-up of the last six months of my reading!

HOW MUCH HAVE YOU READ?

By this point last year I’d read 109 books, so all things considered I don’t think I’m doing too badly. I did raise my reading challenge from last year’s 175 to 200, and I’m behind schedule on that, but I’m not worried yet.

WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN READING?

I don’t think anyone is surprised that Fantasy dominated my reading – it always does, and I don’t see that changing! Although I have started reading more SciFi than I used to.

This looks pretty good, but bear in mind that most of the authors listed under Marginalised are still white. I’m mostly reading books by queer, nonbinary, and/or nuerodivergent authors…but I’m still pretty awful at reading books by BIPOC authors.

This is the first time I’ve counted DNFs in one of these charts, and I’m not that surprised to see that it’s almost a quarter of the pie. I’m very, very quick to DNF books; if I don’t care how the story will end by 25% on my kindle, I quit. There’s just too much to read and not enough time to waste on books that don’t interest me!

And a high DNF rate means that my book ratings stay pretty high; of course they do, because I’m only finishing the books I enjoy, or the ones I feel obligated to finish, like certain ARCs. So no surprises here!

BEST BOOK/S YOU’VE READ SO FAR IN 2021[image error]

I only really READ good books, so of course there are a lot of bests!!! Sorry, I know I’m only supposed to pick a maximum of 5 or something, but…let’s be honest, that’s never gonna happen.

All of these were amazing, and it’s kind of funny to me because I don’t see a unifying theme. I don’t think of myself as a very eclectic reader – I just read the things I like! – but when you stick a lot of my faves side-by-side, it’s hard to find a pattern. If you spot one, let me know!

BEST SEQUEL/S YOU’VE READ SO FAR IN 2021

All five of these were absolutely incredible – although strictly speaking, Paladin’s Strength and The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry are both standalone sequels: you don’t have to have read the previous books to enjoy these ones. (Although I recommend you DO read them, because otherwise you’re depriving yourself of some fabulous reads.) Call of the Bone Ships is the only one that didn’t finish its respective series (although I would not be surprised if we get more books set in the worlds of Paladin’s Strength and Ruthless, I’m almost positive they won’t be tied to the characters in these books) and gods almighty, I seriously cannot WAIT to get my hands on book three. WHAT. WHAT THE HELLS, BARKER. HOW DARE.

NEW RELEASE YOU HAVEN’T READ YET, BUT WANT TO

I’ve dipped my toes in each of these, but had to put them aside when other books demanded my attention. Violet Ghosts in particular I’m a bit worried might be too dark for me right now, but I still really want to read it. The one I want to get to the most is probably Fireheart Tiger, the beginning of which was so utterly beautiful I’m about ready to carve up the clock to get time to read it!

MOST ANTICIPATED RELEASE/S FOR THE SECOND HALF OF THE YEAR

Some of these I’ve been lucky enough to have as ARCs, but I’m still dying for them to release into the world so everyone can know how amazing they are! And the rest, of course, I’m simply dying to get my hands on.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT/S

Joanne Harris has written some seriously beautiful books, and I love her poetic, fairytale-esque prose, but Honeycomb was just so full of bugs!!! I’m shallow as fuck, okay, I want my fantasy to be PRETTY, and crowns covered in a thousand eyes and woodworm feasts and whatever else just squick me out. No thank you. I might give it another go at some point, but…probably not.

Threadneedle is yet another reminder not to pay attention to the hype: the UK publishing industry was buzzing about it being the ‘fantasy debut of the year’, but the writing was so dull and blunt. Nope.

Love Bites was so boring and mundane!!! I thought I was getting a sapphic rom-com with a vampire girlfriend, but no, it was mostly just miserable and banal and angsty in a very undramatic way. The whole book had ‘life is miserable’ vibes, and then the magic-wand-fix ending didn’t work for me at all. Sigh.

The Centaur’s Wife was even more grim, with loveless marriages and the aftermath of an apocalypse and people starving and the earth deciding it wants to kill humanity and a scene that I think was meant to be centaur/human sex which was very random and came out of nowhere??? EVEN WORSE, it had one of those ‘hopeful’ endings which are not real endings and which are not really very fucking hopeful when you think about them for more than 0.2 seconds. URGH.

The rest I’ve either reviewed, or written about elsewhere.

BIGGEST SURPRISE/S

The Year’s Midnight was quiet and gentle and only sneakily fantasy – the MC is a psychiatric doctor who believes his patient’s stories are delusions, but because it’s Neuemeier we know that she really is from another world, and everything she’s saying is true. Nothing obviously magical happens within this first book, although we do hear about past magics via the recitation of those ‘delusions’. It’s not a premise that I thought would interest me, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and then when I started reading it I couldn’t put it down. It was also a surprise in a more literal sense, in that I somehow missed that Neumeier was working on a new trilogy at all!

The Charmed Wife is a wry and sometimes cynical retelling of Cinderella, very clever with just enough Strange, mixing fairytales and the urbane in ways that are delightful and unexpected. I still can’t remember why I picked this up, and it’s nothing like what I usually read, but it was so much fun! I ended up loving it.

For Real isn’t spec fic at all, one of the only books I’ve read so far this year with no SFF elements. It’s a contemporary romance with a nicely realistic and unsterotypical take on BDSM, challenging a lot of the preconceptions and assumptions that even members of the community often hold/make. And it’s Alexis Hall, so of course it’s ridiculously wonderful in every way, from prose to cast.

Neophek Gloss blew me away, and I think is the reason I’ve been much more willing to try sci-fi this year; it wowed me to the point that my wariness against sci-fi has eased a lot. The sheer amount of imagination that went into it delights me, and the whole time I was reading, I felt like the author’s love of sci-fi was just emanating from the pages, which is something that’s not always so obvious. I’m not sure what I was expecting – or whose review convinced me to give it a try – but it definitely shook up my assumptions about modern sci-fi in the best way.

The Queen’s Weapons was a beautiful surprise to me, as a long-term fan of the series – mostly because I’ve always felt that the series wasn’t queer-friendly, and Queen’s Weapons definitively squashed that. Even if it didn’t also take a whole bunch of directions I wasn’t expecting, it left me with ALL THE FEELS.

NEW FAVOURITE AUTHOR/S (DEBUTS OR NEW TO YOU)

I haven’t finished reading Light From Uncommon Stars or The All-Consuming World…but I really don’t need to to know that Ryka Aoki and Cassandra Khaw are going on my auto-buy list. (Although I may skip Khaw’s second novel, which is horror…it sounds far too scary for me!) Neophek Gloss is Hansen’s debut, but was out last year, so it’s both a debut AND new-to-me. Velocity of Revolution is my first Maresca book, just as Helm of Midnight is the first thing I’ve read by Lostetter – but they won’t be my last! I’m going to comb through their backlists very thoroughly.

And I think the rest are all 2021 debuts

UNDERRATED GEMS YOU’VE DISCOVERED RECENTLY

I picked up Travel Light after Amal El-Mohtar sang its praises. It was published in 1952, so it’s not that odd that it’s not well-known these days – but according to El-Mohtar (and several other big names) it didn’t get the love it deserved even in its own time. Which is such a shame! Because it’s this beautiful, clever, sneaky, thoughtful kind-of-fairytale about a princess raised by dragons who chooses to live up to Odin’s challenge. I loved how mythology from different cultures was mixed up together, and how well Mitchison managed to balance a kind of cynicism with sweetness. A really lovely read!

Dawnhounds – boy, I got lucky, because I bought a copy just before it was taken off the market (the first edition was self-published, but now it’s been picked up by a trad publisher!!! I’m so happy for Stronach). I don’t remember who pointed me in its direction, but I’m deeply grateful they did, because Dawnhounds is just breathtaking, both in how gorgeous the prose is and in how imaginative and unique the worldbuilding and story are. The magic system reminded me a bit of quantum physics (as understood by us non-scientists, anyway!) but there’s all these sci-fi elements as well, and queer pirate queens, and!!! It’s just ridiculously brilliant, okay??? You bet I’ll be shouting from the rooftops when it becomes available again, because everyone needs to read it!

Tessa Gratton got some attention with her recent Innis Lear books, which are Shakespeare retellings, but she’s been on my radar for ages as someone who writes wonderfully strange, outside-the-box fantasy. Her book Nightshine was one of my faves of last year and one of my faves EVER, so this year I decided to give Strange Grace another try. The first time I read it I couldn’t get through it, but this time I couldn’t put it down. It’s a dark fantasy of a valley where everything is perfect so long as they sacrifice a boy every seven years, and the teenage threesome who break the system down. Strange Grace doesn’t even pretend to be a love triangle; it’s very obviously polyamory from the start, and it’s just dark enough to be enthralling without giving me nightmares (I am, if you remember, a total wimp when it comes to horror). More people need to read it!

REREADS THIS YEAR

I reread 28 books so far this year, quite a few so that I was ready to read their sequels, but some just because it’s been a long time since I first read the books in question and I missed them. Not going to list them here, or I’ll be here all week!

BOOK/S THAT MADE YOU CRY

Like I said above, The Queen’s Weapons gave me All The Feels – the Black Jewels series has been a major part of my life since I was far too young to have read them, and there’s something unspeakably painful – in a good way! – about a world that’s meant so much to me finally saying that yes, I’d have a place there if I wanted one. (And if it were possible to hop into books…you know what I mean, okay?)

Under the Whispering Door is a book about death and grieving and regret and making peace with your mistakes, so yes, it made me cry. I suspect it’s going to make most readers cry, just because Klune is gentle but doesn’t hold back at all when writing about subjects that are really, really tough for most of us.

BOOK/S THAT MADE YOU HAPPY[image error]

What can I say? These weren’t all feel-good books or anything, but they all delighted me deeply – even if some of them also had me biting my nails at times!

MOST BEAUTIFUL BOOK YOU’VE BOUGHT SO FAR THIS YEAR

I don’t buy physical books very often – my fibromyalgia is particularly bad in my hands, meaning I can’t hold or carry physical books. (Some days I can’t even manage my kindle.) I did pre-order a copy of Subterranean Press’ edition of The Ten Thousand Doors of January, but that’s not here yet!

WHAT BOOKS DO YOU NEED TO READ BY THE END OF THE YEAR?

A fair few, but hopefully not an insurmountable number!

And there you have it, a full round-up of what and how I’ve been reading the last six months! Here’s to the next six being even better!

The post 2021 Mid-Year Freak Out Book Tag appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

2021 MID YEAR FREAK OUT BOOK TAG

I had a ton of fun with this last year, so of course I jumped on it again! Basically a round-up of the last six months of my reading!

HOW MUCH HAVE YOU READ?

By this point last year I’d read 109 books, so all things considered I don’t think I’m doing too badly. I did raise my reading challenge from last year’s 175 to 200, and I’m behind schedule on that, but I’m not worried yet.

WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN READING?

I don’t think anyone is surprised that Fantasy dominated my reading – it always does, and I don’t see that changing! Although I have started reading more SciFi than I used to.

This looks pretty good, but bear in mind that most of the authors listed under Marginalised are still white. I’m mostly reading books by queer, nonbinary, and/or nuerodivergent authors…but I’m still pretty awful at reading books by BIPOC authors.

This is the first time I’ve counted DNFs in one of these charts, and I’m not that surprised to see that it’s almost a quarter of the pie. I’m very, very quick to DNF books; if I don’t care how the story will end by 25% on my kindle, I quit. There’s just too much to read and not enough time to waste on books that don’t interest me!

And a high DNF rate means that my book ratings stay pretty high; of course they do, because I’m only finishing the books I enjoy, or the ones I feel obligated to finish, like certain ARCs. So no surprises here!

BEST BOOK/S YOU’VE READ SO FAR IN 2021[image error]

I only really READ good books, so of course there are a lot of bests!!! Sorry, I know I’m only supposed to pick a maximum of 5 or something, but…let’s be honest, that’s never gonna happen.

All of these were amazing, and it’s kind of funny to me because I don’t see a unifying theme. I don’t think of myself as a very eclectic reader – I just read the things I like! – but when you stick a lot of my faves side-by-side, it’s hard to find a pattern. If you spot one, let me know!

BEST SEQUEL/S YOU’VE READ SO FAR IN 2021

All five of these were absolutely incredible – although strictly speaking, Paladin’s Strength and The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry are both standalone sequels: you don’t have to have read the previous books to enjoy these ones. (Although I recommend you DO read them, because otherwise you’re depriving yourself of some fabulous reads.) Call of the Bone Ships is the only one that didn’t finish its respective series (although I would not be surprised if we get more books set in the worlds of Paladin’s Strength and Ruthless, I’m almost positive they won’t be tied to the characters in these books) and gods almighty, I seriously cannot WAIT to get my hands on book three. WHAT. WHAT THE HELLS, BARKER. HOW DARE.

NEW RELEASE YOU HAVEN’T READ YET, BUT WANT TO

I’ve dipped my toes in each of these, but had to put them aside when other books demanded my attention. Violet Ghosts in particular I’m a bit worried might be too dark for me right now, but I still really want to read it. The one I want to get to the most is probably Fireheart Tiger, the beginning of which was so utterly beautiful I’m about ready to carve up the clock to get time to read it!

MOST ANTICIPATED RELEASE/S FOR THE SECOND HALF OF THE YEAR

Some of these I’ve been lucky enough to have as ARCs, but I’m still dying for them to release into the world so everyone can know how amazing they are! And the rest, of course, I’m simply dying to get my hands on.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT/S

Joanne Harris has written some seriously beautiful books, and I love her poetic, fairytale-esque prose, but Honeycomb was just so full of bugs!!! I’m shallow as fuck, okay, I want my fantasy to be PRETTY, and crowns covered in a thousand eyes and woodworm feasts and whatever else just squick me out. No thank you. I might give it another go at some point, but…probably not.

Threadneedle is yet another reminder not to pay attention to the hype: the UK publishing industry was buzzing about it being the ‘fantasy debut of the year’, but the writing was so dull and blunt. Nope.

Love Bites was so boring and mundane!!! I thought I was getting a sapphic rom-com with a vampire girlfriend, but no, it was mostly just miserable and banal and angsty in a very undramatic way. The whole book had ‘life is miserable’ vibes, and then the magic-wand-fix ending didn’t work for me at all. Sigh.

The Centaur’s Wife was even more grim, with loveless marriages and the aftermath of an apocalypse and people starving and the earth deciding it wants to kill humanity and a scene that I think was meant to be centaur/human sex which was very random and came out of nowhere??? EVEN WORSE, it had one of those ‘hopeful’ endings which are not real endings and which are not really very fucking hopeful when you think about them for more than 0.2 seconds. URGH.

The rest I’ve either reviewed, or written about elsewhere.

BIGGEST SURPRISE/S

The Year’s Midnight was quiet and gentle and only sneakily fantasy – the MC is a psychiatric doctor who believes his patient’s stories are delusions, but because it’s Neuemeier we know that she really is from another world, and everything she’s saying is true. Nothing obviously magical happens within this first book, although we do hear about past magics via the recitation of those ‘delusions’. It’s not a premise that I thought would interest me, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and then when I started reading it I couldn’t put it down. It was also a surprise in a more literal sense, in that I somehow missed that Neumeier was working on a new trilogy at all!

The Charmed Wife is a wry and sometimes cynical retelling of Cinderella, very clever with just enough Strange, mixing fairytales and the urbane in ways that are delightful and unexpected. I still can’t remember why I picked this up, and it’s nothing like what I usually read, but it was so much fun! I ended up loving it.

For Real isn’t spec fic at all, one of the only books I’ve read so far this year with no SFF elements. It’s a contemporary romance with a nicely realistic and unsterotypical take on BDSM, challenging a lot of the preconceptions and assumptions that even members of the community often hold/make. And it’s Alexis Hall, so of course it’s ridiculously wonderful in every way, from prose to cast.

Neophek Gloss blew me away, and I think is the reason I’ve been much more willing to try sci-fi this year; it wowed me to the point that my wariness against sci-fi has eased a lot. The sheer amount of imagination that went into it delights me, and the whole time I was reading, I felt like the author’s love of sci-fi was just emanating from the pages, which is something that’s not always so obvious. I’m not sure what I was expecting – or whose review convinced me to give it a try – but it definitely shook up my assumptions about modern sci-fi in the best way.

The Queen’s Weapons was a beautiful surprise to me, as a long-term fan of the series – mostly because I’ve always felt that the series wasn’t queer-friendly, and Queen’s Weapons definitively squashed that. Even if it didn’t also take a whole bunch of directions I wasn’t expecting, it left me with ALL THE FEELS.

NEW FAVOURITE AUTHOR/S (DEBUTS OR NEW TO YOU)

I haven’t finished reading Light From Uncommon Stars or The All-Consuming World…but I really don’t need to to know that Ryka Aoki and Cassandra Khaw are going on my auto-buy list. (Although I may skip Khaw’s second novel, which is horror…it sounds far too scary for me!) Neophek Gloss is Hansen’s debut, but was out last year, so it’s both a debut AND new-to-me. Velocity of Revolution is my first Maresca book, just as Helm of Midnight is the first thing I’ve read by Lostetter – but they won’t be my last! I’m going to comb through their backlists very thoroughly.

And I think the rest are all 2021 debuts

UNDERRATED GEMS YOU’VE DISCOVERED RECENTLY

I picked up Travel Light after Amal El-Mohtar sang its praises. It was published in 1952, so it’s not that odd that it’s not well-known these days – but according to El-Mohtar (and several other big names) it didn’t get the love it deserved even in its own time. Which is such a shame! Because it’s this beautiful, clever, sneaky, thoughtful kind-of-fairytale about a princess raised by dragons who chooses to live up to Odin’s challenge. I loved how mythology from different cultures was mixed up together, and how well Mitchison managed to balance a kind of cynicism with sweetness. A really lovely read!

Dawnhounds – boy, I got lucky, because I bought a copy just before it was taken off the market (the first edition was self-published, but now it’s been picked up by a trad publisher!!! I’m so happy for Stronach). I don’t remember who pointed me in its direction, but I’m deeply grateful they did, because Dawnhounds is just breathtaking, both in how gorgeous the prose is and in how imaginative and unique the worldbuilding and story are. The magic system reminded me a bit of quantum physics (as understood by us non-scientists, anyway!) but there’s all these sci-fi elements as well, and queer pirate queens, and!!! It’s just ridiculously brilliant, okay??? You bet I’ll be shouting from the rooftops when it becomes available again, because everyone needs to read it!

Tessa Gratton got some attention with her recent Innis Lear books, which are Shakespeare retellings, but she’s been on my radar for ages as someone who writes wonderfully strange, outside-the-box fantasy. Her book Nightshine was one of my faves of last year and one of my faves EVER, so this year I decided to give Strange Grace another try. The first time I read it I couldn’t get through it, but this time I couldn’t put it down. It’s a dark fantasy of a valley where everything is perfect so long as they sacrifice a boy every seven years, and the teenage threesome who break the system down. Strange Grace doesn’t even pretend to be a love triangle; it’s very obviously polyamory from the start, and it’s just dark enough to be enthralling without giving me nightmares (I am, if you remember, a total wimp when it comes to horror). More people need to read it!

REREADS THIS YEAR

I reread 28 books so far this year, quite a few so that I was ready to read their sequels, but some just because it’s been a long time since I first read the books in question and I missed them. Not going to list them here, or I’ll be here all week!

BOOK/S THAT MADE YOU CRY

Like I said above, The Queen’s Weapons gave me All The Feels – the Black Jewels series has been a major part of my life since I was far too young to have read them, and there’s something unspeakably painful – in a good way! – about a world that’s meant so much to me finally saying that yes, I’d have a place there if I wanted one. (And if it were possible to hop into books…you know what I mean, okay?)

Under the Whispering Door is a book about death and grieving and regret and making peace with your mistakes, so yes, it made me cry. I suspect it’s going to make most readers cry, just because Klune is gentle but doesn’t hold back at all when writing about subjects that are really, really tough for most of us.

BOOK/S THAT MADE YOU HAPPY[image error]

What can I say? These weren’t all feel-good books or anything, but they all delighted me deeply – even if some of them also had me biting my nails at times!

MOST BEAUTIFUL BOOK YOU’VE BOUGHT SO FAR THIS YEAR

I don’t buy physical books very often – my fibromyalgia is particularly bad in my hands, meaning I can’t hold or carry physical books. (Some days I can’t even manage my kindle.) I did pre-order a copy of Subterranean Press’ edition of The Ten Thousand Doors of January, but that’s not here yet!

WHAT BOOKS DO YOU NEED TO READ BY THE END OF THE YEAR?

A fair few, but hopefully not an insurmountable number!

And there you have it, a full round-up of what and how I’ve been reading the last six months! Here’s to the next six being even better!

The post 2021 MID YEAR FREAK OUT BOOK TAG appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.