Siavahda's Blog, page 85

In Short: June

Every Book a Doorway is officially two years old!!! It was my blogaversary on the 1st, and my fibro was so bad this month I wasn’t able to do anything to celebrate it – or to get all the Pride content I wanted to get done, done – but still! IT’S BEEN TWO YEARS AND I’M STILL AT THIS. WOAH. I feel really proud of myself, and happy, and although I couldn’t explain why I want to blog about books even if you paid me, I don’t see myself stopping any time soon.

Here’s to another year! But now, on to how I did in June!

Read

So I put this post together expecting my number of ‘books read’ to be as low as, if not lower than, last month’s nine. BUT APPARENTLY NOT??? My brain has felt so fritzy this month and I haven’t felt like I’ve been able to concentrate at all, but I guess I managed well enough because I read SIXTEEN books this month!!! WHAT. Yay!

Kushiel’s Dart, A Pale Light in the Black, Accident of Stars, The Outside, and Wheel of the Infinite were all rereads; Kushiel’s Dart was every bit as beautiful as I remembered, but Accident of Stars, The Outside, and Wheel of the Infinite all took me aback by being even better than I remember them being the first time around! Wheel of the Infinite, in particular, I didn’t remember much of, and was an absolute joy to come back to.

Also, I have GOT to include the full artwork for Wheel‘s wrap-around cover. Originally the idiot publishers edited the artist’s work to make Maskelle (the brown woman, who is the MC) grey-skinned, but this is how it’s supposed to look!

Wheel of the Infinite cover art by Donato Giancola

Isn’t it freaking stunning?! I’m going to have to hunt down a copy with that cover, now. I need it on my bookshelf!

Excluding rereads, Water Horse, Hard Reboot, and Strange Grace were the standouts this month. They’re all very different stories, but they’re all excellent (and all of them are queer! Bonus) and I fully intend to write proper reviews for them. But seriously: nab copies for yourself if you don’t already own them!

Now, out of 16 books, I read

10 women, 5 men, and 3 genderqueer/nonbinary authors14 books by white folx, and 2 authors of colour.

I guess two authors of colour are better than last month, where there was no book solely authored by someone of colour, just an anthology where the authors came from all ethnicities. Two out of fourteen is still pretty bad, though. Gods damn it.

Books Reviewed

Seven reviews, even if three of them were mini-reviews, isn’t bad! I mean, I don’t feel like my write-ups did One Last Stop or Summer Sons justice, but I did my best, and I’m pretty pleased with how the rest came out.

Books DNF-ed

From what I managed to read of it, I think The Empire’s Ruin is probably really freaking excellent. Unfortunately, it’s been a few years since I read the first trilogy, and I forgot how grimdark this series is. And it turns out I am really not able to deal with any kind of grimdark at the moment. So the fact that this one got a DNF from me? Is in no way a judgement of its quality.

The same goes for The Maleficent Seven – I’m apparently very bad at judging books at the moment, because for some reason I thought this was going to be more comedic, and it turns out that it is not!!! Or, it is, a bit, but in a way that was completely overshadowed for me by the grimmness and gore. I don’t think it’s a bad book, it’s just not a me book.

Unfortunately, I thought Sisters of Shadow and Iron Widow were both pretty awful. Warning bells started going off for me two pages into Sisters, when it was revealed that the girl who lives in the woods has waist-length hair which she doesn’t tie back – um, no??? It is going to be CONSTANTLY full of twigs and leaves and dirt??? It’s going to be COMPLETELY impossible to keep clean in a pre-industrialised setting when you don’t have servants to do it for you??? Wtf? The writing was bizarrely simplistic, the dialogue was stilted (some of it was lifted straight out of a B-list horror movie, I was cringing), plot conflicts are just hand-waved…and I thought Livesey made some storytelling decisions that were not in the best interest of the story itself. Like kidnapping the bestie in the prologue and just telling us about this amazing incredible life-changing friendship these two girls have – instead of letting us see it, get invested, and then kidnapping the bestie. Also, love how the uncle was all ‘of course you must go after your friend, but of course I can’t come with you’, giving no reason for that whatsoever. I mean, I get that having Good Parents/Guardians hanging around gets in the way of the story, but please at least give me a reason why this character you want me to like is happy to let his niece go up against scary cults all by herself??? Put him in a wheelchair! Give him a chronic illness that means he can’t travel! Say they’re on the verge of penury and he can’t leave the shop closed for the duration of an adventure!!! Just give me something.

Iron Widow was heartbreaking, because I’ve been looking forward to it for YEARS…but it was such a huge letdown. Zhao tackles all these amazing-awful issues, most of which are some variation on hardcore misogyny, and has this incredible protagonist, who is the vicious ruthless cynical anti-heroine I have always wanted…but the writing. Urgh. The writing. I wish this had been written as Adult instead of YA, because the prose is so simple and bland and the twists are so obvious and everything feels watered down from the top-tier intensity I was expecting, and I am 99% sure that was done to make it Easy For the Teens (which is patronising as hell, but I’ve been seeing way too much of it in YA lately). And it feels very odd to be reading about such horrors (there are plenty of horrors) with such simplistic prose. Pretty bitterly disappointed.

The Bone Way was another one I was really excited about, but the writing was really jarring. The worldbuilding was lovely (I did not realise it wasn’t going to be set in our world, but it isn’t, and the world Underhill’s created is very cool) and there was nothing wrong with the cast…just… It felt like it had been written by someone very young. The tone often didn’t match the scene, and the rhythm of the prose was very…mechanical? I don’t know how to explain what I mean. Lots of telling instead of showing, too, and sometimes it is RIGHT to tell, sometimes you MUST tell, but not like this. It was very wooden. I think that’s the word I want.

…If I count these as mini-reviews, that brings me up from 7 to 10, right?

Arcs Received

A pretty dramatic mix this month. I’m incredibly excited for The Splinter King and The Hand of the Sun King – and The Goddess of Nothing At All is one I actually reached out to the author for (I had to fill out a little application and everything!) I’ve started reading all three, and they’re all so different, but looking great so far.

…And I’ve already explained that the other four ended up being DNFs.

Arcs Outstanding

I continue to slowly work my way through these! I’ve started all but two of them. Getting there, getting there. I finished Under the Whispering Door in the early hours of this morning, and folx, be prepared to cry, because everyone who reads it is going to cry. But in a good way??? Reviewing it is going to be so, so hard.

But the ones I’ve really got to focus on now are Hold Fast Through the Fire, The Past is Red, and The Fallen, since they all release next month! (The Splinter King releases next month in the UK, but since I’m on the US Netgalley I have until September or so for that one. Although I would like to get it reviewed in time for the UK release!)

REC LISTS & MISC

I had so many wonderful plans for Pride Month, but the fibro got in the way. But on the plus side, it’s not like I only showcase queer content during Pride!

My rec list of SFF With Polyamory turned out really well though – and has also been my most popular post in ages. I can only assume someone impressive shared a link to it!

Looking Forward

July isn’t as packed full of exciting (for me) releases as June was, but the ones it’s got are heavy hitters! NEW CATHERYNNE VALENTE NEW CATHERYNNE VALENTE NEW CATHERYNNE VALENTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I adored A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians last year (you can see how much at my review over here, if you so choose) so of course I’m excited for the sequel, A Radical Act of Free Magic. (And are those tentacles on the cover??? I’m pretty sure those are tentacles on the cover! WILL WE GET KRAKENS? SOME OTHER SEA MONSTERS??? WE WILL KNOW SOOOON!) And while I didn’t review it, The Extraordinaries by TJ Klune was the most-fun thing I’ve read in ages – I actually enjoyed it more than The House in the Cerulean Sea, and yes, I’m aware that’s blasphemy! Which means I’m making grabby hands at that sequel as well!

The Splinter King is another sequel, and again, I loved the first book – but that was only a few months ago!!! I can’t BELIEVE we’re getting two massive epics from the same series in the same year! I feel so spoiled, and I love it. THANK YOU MIKE BROOKS!

Which is all to say that I think it’s going to be a good month, and I hope it’s a good one for you too!

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

Yearning Like Honey, Desire Like Blood: Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo

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.

Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo
Representation: Queer MC, M/M, secondary polyamory M/M/F, secondary Black character
on 28th September 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
ISBN: 125079028X
Goodreads

Andrew and Eddie did everything together, best friends bonded more deeply than brothers, until Eddie left Andrew behind to start his graduate program at Vanderbilt. Six month later, only days before Andrew was to join him in Nashville, Eddie dies of an apparent suicide. He leaves Andrew a horrible inheritance: a roommate he doesn’t know, friends he never asked for, and a gruesome phantom with bleeding wrists that mutters of revenge.

As Andrew searches for the truth of Eddie’s death, he uncovers the lies and secrets left behind by the person he trusted most, discovering a family history soaked in blood and death. Whirling between the backstabbing academic world where Eddie spent his days and the circle of hot boys, fast cars, and hard drugs that ruled Eddie’s nights, the walls Andrew has built against the world begin to crumble, letting in the phantom that hungers for him.

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~bruised boys and fast cars
~queer yearning haunting
~the poetry of masculinity
~no homo, but let me feed you my blood and make you mine
~I did not know ghostly/demonic possession was a kink but that’s a thing now

Take The Raven Cycle and give it shark-sharp teeth. Cross the result with All For the Game. Feed the result gasoline mixed with blood; watch to make sure it laps up every drop. Give it breath like a southern summer, thick and humid and hot as chrome left under sunlight. Make it a nest of bones and secrets and sighs. Let it sharpen its claws on your wrists. Give it your throat.

Do all that…and then scrap it all, because Summer Sons is wholly its own, and no comparisons can do justice to the rich, simmering, chilling ache that is this book.

The comparisons are inevitable. But they’re wrong.

I’ve followed Mandelo’s reviews and think-pieces for years and years, so it was a no-brainer to request Summer Sons when it showed up on Netgalley. I never doubted for a second that this was going to be good.

But it’s not good.

It’s motherfucking breathtaking.

Summer Sons is the kind of book that wraps its fingers around your heart and doesn’t let go; rich and raw and enthralling, an alchemy of the worldly and otherworldly that is pure, dark, thrilling magic. Mandelo’s prose is deft and merciless as a scalpel, soft and deceptive as silk; the heat is scorching, the yearning searing and savage. The pages run with desire so thick it drips like honey – until it gushes like blood.

This is a book that will drag you under.

The official description does a perfectly accurate job of setting the scene for you: this is, on the most superficial of levels, a murder-mystery – even if Andrew is the only one who believes Eddie’s suicide was somehow staged. But although I wouldn’t say the hunt for Eddie’s killer or killers is a secondary plotline – Andrew would never let that happen – it still isn’t close to the whole story.

Or maybe it is, in that Andrew’s hunt becomes as much about searching within himself for answers as it is looking for them without. He has to stalk his own shadow if he wants to unravel every secret; dig deep into memories he’s locked away, thoughts he’s never let himself think, instincts and hungers he’s refused to acknowledge, never mind looked at too closely. To discover what the truth is he has to figure out what it was, and oh, the razor-wire-and-velvet tangle of toxic masculinity and queer longing is such a fucking masterpiece.

Because fuck yes, this is queer. ‘Till death do us part’? Death can fucking try.

And he kept hearing Riley say he was your–on loop. What word should he put after? On paper, a sibling; in practice, something else. If Eddie had been Riley’s friend, he wasn’t that for Andrew. That friendship was a muted fraction of the real thing, the marrow-thing, that tied them together. Through the cavern and their hauntings since, through a life spent with Eddie keeping him leashed but cared for at the same time, he couldn’t find a label that fit where he needed it to go. Maybe instead, just a hard stop: he was yours.

And honestly, I think that’s where the horror is; not in the ghosts and curses and magic dark and tangled as ancient roots – although we have all of that and more – but in the toxic, intoxicating relationship Andrew had with Eddie, continues to have with his own sexuality. It’s as sensual as it is fucked-up, desperate and starving, terribly beautiful and beautifully terrible and oh, so willfully, adoringly blind. Of course Andrew is haunted by Eddie’s spectre; how could the grave part them? Even the reaper couldn’t untangle all the thorns and knots binding them together, suffocating Andrew even as he leans into them. When the haunting progresses to full-on possession, the reader can’t be surprised; it’s a foregone conclusion, an almost embarrassingly obvious metaphor for all the ways in which Andrew was and is possessed by his best friend. Eddie didn’t possess Andrew’s body in life, so he takes it in death – and maybe what’s terrifying is that the snarled-up, toxic masculinity they both grew up with finds that, literal ghostly possession, less frightening than two guys fucking.

There is so much to unpack here.

Mandelo’s prose has you smelling the burning rubber during the drag-racing, hearing the cicadas, sweating in the thick humidity of the story in your hands. It has your heart pounding and your stomach clenching and your knuckles turning white from holding the book so hard, torn between turning the pages as fast as you can and savouring every molasses-sweet word. It digs in deep and uncoils at a perfect pace; almost casually gutting the marble facade of academia to spill out the stinking backstabbing and racism in its guts; tearing open the macho bullshit and unthinking homophobia of a particular kind of asshole and prying out the emotions underneath, raw and pulsing. Summer Sons revels in the danger of razor-blade boys while calling them on their shit, subverting stereotypes about everything from the South to drug dealers while dealing with the reality of them.

And that reality’s not pretty, but damn is it compelling.

Summer Sons is more than I hoped for and everything I didn’t know to want. It’s been weeks since I finished reading it, weeks since I started drafting this review, and the story’s haunted me ever since. I want to read it again, and again, and again; I want it to be released already so I can talk about it with others who have read it. It’s so hard to put everything I feel about this book into words; I’m finding it impossible to distill down everything Summer Sons is into a neat little review for you. I have drafted and redrafted and this is as close as I’ve managed to come, and I know it’s still not good enough, but I don’t think I can do better. You’re just going to have to read Summer Sons for yourself.

This book is as sensual as it is terrifying, a Molotov cocktail in a beautiful perfume bottle, equal parts hot breath and bone-chilling cold. The mystery is as thick in the air as the humidity. It is luscious and skeletal, ozone and diesel and sweat and blood. It is brutal and it is decadent, hedonistic. It is exactly what it should be. It is perfect.

Preorder it immediately if you haven’t already.

(And someone still needs to write me an essay on the homoeroticism of being possessed by your best friend’s ghost, ‘kay? ‘Kay.)

The post Yearning Like Honey, Desire Like Blood: Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday #40!

This week we have SIX new releases to get excited about, from magic cannibal nuns to magic Jurassic Park!

Star Eater by Kerstin Hall
Representation: Bisexual MC, multiple queer side characters
on 22nd June 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads

All martyrdoms are difficult.

Elfreda Raughn will avoid pregnancy if it kills her, and one way or another, it will kill her. Though she’s able to stomach her gruesome day-to-day duties, the reality of preserving the Sisterhood of Aytrium’s magical bloodline horrifies her. She wants out, whatever the cost.

So when a shadowy cabal approaches Elfreda with an offer of escape, she leaps at the opportunity. As their spy, she gains access to the highest reaches of the Sisterhood, and enters a glittering world of opulent parties, subtle deceptions, and unexpected bloodshed.

A phantasmagorical indictment of hereditary power, Star Eater takes readers deep into a perilous and uncanny world where even the most powerful women are forced to choose what sacrifices they will make, so that they might have any choice at all.

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This is only one of my most-anticipated books of the YEAR! I fell utterly in love with Hall’s novella Border Keeper last year, and I can’t believe we get to have a novel of her writing this soon! I have been promised giant cats and floating islands and optimistic fantasy (despite the cannabilism) and a cast of queer women, so GIVE IT TO ME ALREADY!

*grabby hands*

The Witness for the Dead (The Goblin Emperor, #2) by Katherine Addison
Representation: Achillean MC, mention of past M/M
on 22nd June 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads

Katherine Addison returns at last to the world of The Goblin Emperor with this stand-alone sequel.

When the young half-goblin emperor Maia sought to learn who had killed his father and half-brothers, he turned to an obscure resident of his Court, a Prelate of Ulis and a Witness for the Dead. Thara Celehar found the truth, though it did him no good to discover it.

Now Celehar lives in the city of Amalo, far from the Court though not exactly in exile. He has not escaped from politics, but his position gives him the ability to serve the common people of the city, which is his preference. He lives modestly, but his decency and fundamental honesty will not permit him to live quietly.

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This is NOT a sequel to The Goblin Emperor – please do not go into it expecting it to be! – but it is a lovely read that is part murder-investigation and very slice-of-life-y. I was lucky enough to read it early and reviewed it here, so check that out for all my thoughts, but basically although my feelings about it are a little mixed, I still think it’s a wonderful book that many readers will enjoy!

Just don’t think it’s going to be about Maia in any way, okay?

Violet Ghosts by Leah Thomas
Representation: Trans MC
on 22nd June 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Urban Fantasy
Goodreads

Acclaimed author Leah Thomas tells the story of a teen determined to right the wrongs of female ghosts haunted in the afterlife.

Dani’s best friend, Sarah, is a ghost. But maybe that’s normal when you've spent your childhood running from an abusive parent.

Dani and Sarah might be more than friends, though Dani dares not say so. Dani is afraid that if he tells Sarah he’s trans, she won’t bother haunting him anymore. Sarah’s got good reason to distrust boys, having been strangled by one.After Sarah and Dani come across another ghost haunted by her own brutal murder, they set out to bring peace and safety to spirits like her. But when an old rival reenters Dani’s life, their unexpected friendship gives Dani a strange new feeling of belonging. As Dani starts to find his place in the living world, he’ll need to let go of his ghosts.

With her signature lyricism, Leah Thomas has woven a poignant supernatural story for the #MeToo age.

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I’ve been massively intrigued by this premise since I first heard of Violet Ghosts, and I’m still excited to get to read it. I’ve not read anything by this author before, but I’ve heard good things, so. Fingers crossed?

Questland by Carrie Vaughn
on 22nd June 2021
Genres: Sci Fi
Goodreads

"Questland is a thrill ride…Richly imagined, action-packed, maximum fun." —Charles Yu, New York Times bestselling author of Interior Chinatown

YOU FIND YOURSELF IN A MAZE FULL OF TWISTY PASSAGES...   Literature professor Dr. Addie Cox is living a happy, if sheltered, life in her ivory tower when Harris Lang, the famously eccentric billionaire tech genius, offers her an unusual job. He wants her to guide a mercenary strike team sent to infiltrate his island retreat off the northwest coast of the United States. Addie is puzzled by her role on the mission until she understands what Lang has built: 

Insula Mirabilis, an isolated resort where tourists will one day pay big bucks for a convincing, high-tech-powered fantasy-world experience, complete with dragons, unicorns, and, yes, magic.  

Unfortunately, one of the island's employees has gone rogue and activated an invisible force shield that has cut off all outside communication. A Coast Guard cutter attempting to pass through the shield has been destroyed. Suspicion rests on Dominic Brand, the project’s head designer— and Addie Cox's ex-boyfriend. Lang has tasked Addie and the mercenary team with taking back control of the island at any cost.  

But Addie is wrestling demons of her own—and not the fantastical kind. Now, she must navigate the deadly traps of Insula Mirabilis as well as her own past trauma. And no d20, however lucky, can help Addie make this saving throw.

“Gamers rejoice! Carrie Vaughn has conjured up a fun and fast-paced story filled with elves, d20s, and Monty Python riffs.” —Monte Cook, ENnie Award-winning creator of the Numenera roleplaying game

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This is another author I know nothing about, but I will follow you anywhere if you promise me unicorns – even if they’re only mentioned in passing – and honestly, the premise sounds kind of ridiculously fantastic and fun? Also, creating a magic version of Jurassic Park is exactly what I, too, would do if I was that rich, so, you know, I feel like I have a connection with this Harris Lang character already!

Cinders of Yesterday (Legacy of Shadows, #1) by Jen Karner
Representation: F/F
on 22nd June 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Urban Fantasy
Goodreads

Paranormal Hunter Dani Black wants nothing more ardently than she does revenge. A year ago, the rogue Necromancer Spectre murdered her partner during a hunt gone wrong, and she’s been looking for a way to kill him —and keep him dead — ever since. When rumors of a weapon capable of killing anything surfaces in Dawson Maryland, she sets out on a mission to get her hands on it. While unraveling a web of clues about her own past, Dani runs into the alluring Emilie Lockgrove, eldest daughter of a magical family who are inexplicably tied to Spectre.

Emilie Lockgrove survived the catastrophic fire that killed her mother and hospitalized both her and her sister. Ten years later, she has returned to Dawson, expecting to confront the trauma of her past and move on. Instead, she discovers magic is real and encounters actual ghosts, namely the necromancer who has been hunting her family for 200 years.

Dani intends to kill Spectre, or die trying. Emilie wants to reclaim her life and her memories of the magic protecting her from Spectre. To survive, they’ll need to work together to confront their past, break the spell holding back Emilie’s magic, and destroy Spectre once and for all.

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So, here’s the thing: I am wary of Urban Fantasy in general, and specifically blurbs that give me that kind of Kate Daniels vibe – but I have heard such amazing things about this one that I just have to give it a go regardless! The reviews are absolutely glowing, and there’s been some very cool discussion about it on social media, so yes, I’ll be snapping up a copy when it releases tomorrow.

Artifact Space by Miles Cameron
on 24th June 2021
Genres: Sci Fi
Goodreads

Out in the darkness of space, something is targeting the Greatships.

With their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city, the Greatships are the lifeblood of human occupied space, transporting an unimaginable volume - and value - of goods from City, the greatest human orbital, all the way to Tradepoint at the other, to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien species.

It has always been Marca Nbaro's dream to achieve the near-impossible: escape her upbringing and venture into space.

All it took, to make her way onto the crew of the Greatship Athens was thousands of hours in simulators, dedication, and pawning or selling every scrap of her old life in order to forge a new one. But though she's made her way onboard with faked papers, leaving her old life - and scandals - behind isn't so easy.

She may have just combined all the dangers of her former life, with all the perils of the new . . .

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Miles Cameron is one of my favourite fantasy authors, so yes, I’m more than willing to follow him into scifi. (Especially since Janny Wurts praised it so highly!) I’m not sure what specifically to expect, but I’m expecting great things.

That’s it for this week! Will you be reading any of these? Let me know in the comments!

The post Must-Have Monday #40! appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday #39!

There’s only four releases to feature this week, but they all look great, from Regency-esque F/F to Science Fantasy with Black witches!

The Tangleroot Palace: Stories by Marjorie M. Liu
Representation: F/F and M/M
on 15th June 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads

New York Times bestseller and Hugo, British Fantasy, Romantic Times, and Eisner award-winning author of the graphic novel, Monstress, Marjorie Liu leads you deep into the heart of the tangled woods. In her long-awaited debut story collection, dark, lush, and spellbinding short fiction you will find unexpected detours, dangerous magic, and even more dangerous women.

“The Tangleroot Palace is charming and ruthless. Tales that feel new yet grounded in the infinitely ancient, a mythology for the coming age.”—Angela Slatter, author of The Bitterwood Bible

“Marjorie Liu is magic! Her writing is passionate, lyric, gritty, and riveting. She belongs high on everyone’s must-read list.”—Elizabeth Lowell, author of Only Mine

Briar, bodyguard for a body-stealing sorceress, discovers her love for Rose, whose true soul emerges only once a week. An apprentice witch seeks her freedom through betrayal, the bones of the innocent, and a meticulously-plotted spell. In a world powered by crystal skulls, a warrior returns to save China from invasion by her jealous ex. A princess runs away from an arranged marriage, finding family in a strange troupe of traveling actors at the border of the kingdom’s deep, dark woods.
Concluding with a gorgeous full-length novella, Marjorie Liu’s first short fiction collection is an unflinching sojourn into her thorny tales of love, revenge, and new beginnings.

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The amazing cover would have grabbed me anyway, but this is actually by the same author as the Monstress comics! I adore the Monstress world so I’m really excited to see Liu tell stories through prose rather than comics. And allegedly plenty of the stories feature queerness, so – bonus!

Blood Like Magic (Blood Like Magic, #1) by Liselle Sambury
Representation: Black MC, trans love interest, trans side character, lesbian demi side character
on 15th June 2021
Genres: Science Fantasy
Goodreads

A rich, dark urban fantasy debut following a teen witch who is given a horrifying task: sacrificing her first love to save her family’s magic. The problem is, she’s never been in love—she’ll have to find the perfect guy before she can kill him.

After years of waiting for her Calling—a trial every witch must pass in order to come into their powers—the one thing Voya Thomas didn’t expect was to fail. When Voya’s ancestor gives her an unprecedented second chance to complete her Calling, she agrees—and then is horrified when her task is to kill her first love. And this time, failure means every Thomas witch will be stripped of their magic.

Voya is determined to save her family’s magic no matter the cost. The problem is, Voya has never been in love, so for her to succeed, she’ll first have to find the perfect guy—and fast. Fortunately, a genetic matchmaking program has just hit the market. Her plan is to join the program, fall in love, and complete her task before the deadline. What she doesn’t count on is being paired with the infuriating Luc—how can she fall in love with a guy who seemingly wants nothing to do with her?

With mounting pressure from her family, Voya is caught between her morality and her duty to her bloodline. If she wants to save their heritage and Luc, she’ll have to find something her ancestor wants more than blood. And in witchcraft, blood is everything.

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Blood Like Magic sounded epic BEFORE I found out that this is a book about witches set in a not-too-distant future, complete with things like gene sequencing and tech that can find your genetic soulmate! We don’t get Science Fantasy very often, and it’s one of my favourite things, so this is ticking all the boxes for me!

The Hellion's Waltz (Feminine Pursuits #3) by Olivia Waite
Representation: F/F
on 15th June 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists
Goodreads

It’s not a crime to steal a heart...  

Sophie Roseingrave hates nothing more than a swindler. After her family lost their piano shop to a con man in London, they’re trying to start fresh in a new town. Her father is convinced Carrisford is an upright and honest place, but Sophie is not so sure. She has grave suspicions about silk-weaver Madeline Crewe, whose stunning beauty doesn’t hide the fact that she’s up to something.

All Maddie Crewe needs is one big score, one grand heist to properly fund the weavers’ union forever. She has found her mark in Mr. Giles, a greedy draper, and the entire association of weavers and tailors and clothing merchants has agreed to help her. The very last thing she needs is a small but determined piano-teacher and composer sticking her nose in other people’s business. If Sophie won’t be put off, the only thing to do is to seduce her to the cause.

Will Sophie’s scruples force her to confess the plot before Maddie gets her money? Or will Maddie lose her nerve along with her heart?

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Okay, no, it’s not SFF, but I’ve been making an exception from the Feminine Pursuits series since book one, so hush. Each of these books stand alone, so you CAN dive straight into Hellion’s Waltz, but I assure you that the previous books, The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics and The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows, are both excellent and you should definitely read them if you’re looking for Regency-esque F/F!

As you may have surmised, I adored Mechanics and Widows very, very much, and have been making grabby hands at Hellion’s Waltz for ages now. Waite writes genuinely gorgeous and clever historical fiction that also manages to be wonderfully escapist, and I can’t wait to read this newest book!

Foxen Bloom by Parker Foye
Representation: M/M
on 17th June 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists
Goodreads

Season after season, hunters have attempted to capture the white-tailed stag. Local legend holds that its capture promises prosperity, and in a land that is dying—to hunger, to war; to a magical curse, some say—even a whisper of hope is a powerful lure. Yet every hunter who tries fails, never to leave the forest. Fenton, god of the forest, yet imprisoned within its borders, watches from his place in the trees as the hunters first despoil and then fall to his land, dispassionate as his deadwood heart.

Prior doesn't hope to capture the stag or secure prosperity. He has a far bolder hunt in mind: to entreat the god of the forest to save his sister from the sickness sweeping the land. It's a desperate attempt without much hope of success. He doesn't imagine he'll meet the god in person, much less that he'll find himself agreeing to a favour in turn: his sister's life will be spared, and in exchange, Prior will kill the god's sibling. And he certainly hadn't imagined that a god would be so... human.

When Fenton leaves the forest, he has little but revenge on his mind. As he spends more time with Prior, though, he discovers that the world isn't as simple as the hunt, and he's not the only hunter with teeth—but sometimes the chase is worth the risk of being caught.

Content Warnings: contagious magical illness; bloody violence; magical violence; bodily injury; death, including the death of animals for food, and magical animals in battle; abduction; vomiting; minor self-harm; body-horror; sex.

Cover artwork by Tiferet Design with illustration by Mar Espinosa.

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This sounds like it has Silver in the Wood vibes, and I am the only person on the planet to hate that book, but this is FOYE so I am willing to give it a go. Foye has an excellent track record writing wild feral queer love stories (you simply MUST check out their Love Has Claws trilogy) and I have yet to be let down by one of their books, so. Bring it on!

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

The post Must-Have Monday #39! appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Look Like the Innocent Flower, Kill Them With Your Blossoms: The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

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.

The Jasmine Throne (Burning Kingdoms, #1) by Tasha Suri
Representation: Cast of colour, sapphic MCs, F/F or wlw
on 10th June 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, High Fantasy
ISBN: 0356515648
Goodreads

Author of Empire of Sand and Realm of Ash Tasha Suri's The Jasmine Throne, beginning a new trilogy set in a world inspired by the history and epics of India, in which a captive princess and a maidservant in possession of forbidden magic become unlikely allies on a dark journey to save their empire from the princess's traitor brother.

Imprisoned by her dictator brother, Malini spends her days in isolation in the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of the powerful, magical deathless waters — but is now little more than a decaying ruin.

Priya is a maidservant, one among several who make the treacherous journey to the top of the Hirana every night to clean Malini’s chambers. She is happy to be an anonymous drudge, so long as it keeps anyone from guessing the dangerous secret she hides.

But when Malini accidentally bears witness to Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a vengeful princess seeking to depose her brother from his throne. The other is a priestess seeking to find her family. Together, they will change the fate of an empire.

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~Nature magic is not soft and gentle
~WET SARI SCENE
~family is complicated
~that which yields is not always weak
~Look like th’ innocent flower/But be the serpent under ‘t.
~and while you’re at it, kill them with flowers

The Jasmine Throne is a book that takes our ideas of femininity and power and gentleness…and burns them to the ground.

I think the most obvious example of this is the magic wielded by the ‘temple children’ – survivors of a massacre-by-fire decades ago, blessed by the deathless waters and given abilities not seen for hundreds of years. When I first understood that this magic was nature-magic – a power over plants, specifically – I was actually kind of disappointed, and not very interested. Earth-bending is one thing, but being able to make flowers grow seemed so…gentle. And sometimes gentle magic is exactly what you want, but the characters in this story seemed to need a more dramatic magic, something that could be used for offense, a magic for battle. What good were flowers going to be against soldiers?

A lot, it turns out. They were going to be good for a lot against soldiers, swords, scythes. Suri took my expectations and completely subverted them, and honestly, the entire book is like that.

I’m going to be thinking about the imagery of the rose-bower for a long time, I think.

Part of me simply adores the Jasmine Throne for going against my expectations at every turn, not least in the dynamic between Princess Malini and Priya – if you’re expecting lots of softness and tenderness, you need to go looking for another book, because you won’t find it here. Malini and Priya’s relationship is at once both brutally simple – they both have a use for each other – and infinitely complicated – there are so many layers of want here. But honestly, I’d hesitate to call it a romance. It’s something, something intense, and there’s certainly a sexual element to it…but they never exchange I love yous, and I think that’s very deliberate. I don’t know if it will come later, if their relationship and dynamic will evolve over the course of the series to get to that point, but at least in this first book, I don’t think most of what they feel for each other is what most of us would recognise as any kind of love, romantic or otherwise.

Respect, yes. Desire, sure. But both of them have invested so much of themselves in other objectives, ideals, and missions, that there isn’t really anything left to offer a romantic partner. Not really. And to be honest, I kind of love that. I like that this isn’t a traditional love story, that this isn’t a typical romance. I’m not sure what I expected walking into Jasmine Throne – only that it was going to be mindblowing, because it’s Tasha Suri, so obviously it’s going to be mindblowing – but it wasn’t two women who desire each other, but desire other things more. They’re both too loyal to their ideals or peoples or plans to throw those things over in favour of love.

So, you know, spoilers. This isn’t that kind of love story.

The Jasmine Throne is a love story in the sense of individuals loving their country, their peoples – it’s very much a story about patriotic love, and how different that can look in different people, from different angles (one person’s vision of a perfect future for their country rarely matches everyone else’s). It’s about legacy and history and culture, and colonialism, and how to survive and hold on to your history and cultural identity when a bigger power is trying to destroy it all.

It’s a story about women, fundamentally. I was initially disappointed to find another empire where women can’t wear crowns or sit in the thrones – I prefer stories with more gender-neutral approaches to ruling – but Suri quietly, deftly weaves what I can only call the ‘true story’ that lies behind the public image of the empire, and that true story is one where women rule – even if men don’t realise it. The Emperor is emperor because he’s descended from a specific group of holy women; the regent’s regency has only gone as smoothly as it has because his wife has been playing him all along; the entire political structure of the empire is in the process of shifting because an apparently quiet, biddable, beautiful princess has been writing pretty letters and paying compliments to the right people. The Jasmine Throne is a treatise on traditional female strength; that is, the kind of strength which we consider feminine, which is quiet and pretty and doesn’t look like strength at all. Manipulation through manners rather than brute force. Subtlety over strong-arming. Compliments instead of threats.

And then Suri takes all of that…and says, those whose strength lies in quiet can still roar. Each of her main characters – Priya, Malini, and Bhumika, the wife of the regent responsible for Malini’s captivity and Priya’s employment – exquisitely embody ‘look like th’ innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t’. Malini is no trained warrior, Priya is a handmaiden, Bhumika tends her flowers – and every single one of them is utterly terrifying when they decide to be. Bhumika’s arc probably best embodies this – I have to confess to being one of the many who underestimated her, right up until she decided to show her hand – but it applies to them all. And there’s no way to read this in a way that’s not enormously empowering, that doesn’t make the hair on your arms stand up and give you delicious shivers when Suri decides to spear you with her prose.

The men in The Jasmine Throne are all of secondary importance – even the ones who very much believe the opposite. Which isn’t to say that the women have an easy time of things, or even that they’re all on each other’s side, because they’re not; some of the women in this book may be allies, but just as many oppose them. Women are not a monolith; I would say Suri is careful to avoid that writing mistake, but I suspect that that kind of lazy storytelling would never even occur to her. Every single one of her characters – even down to the most minor – are all too detailed, too carefully created, too real, to make me believe that she’s ever slapdash in her writing.

Anyway.

This is epic fantasy set in a world beautifully drawn from Southeast Asia, with nature magic that rapidly outgrew the pot of my small mind, with a mythology and religions that were just so blessedly strange and new to me. And when push comes to shove, it’s a girl-power book in a way I’ve never seen girl-power done before. I didn’t want to read about gentle, plant-growing magic, but being able to kill with flowers is – if I had to distill The Jasmine Throne down to one image, it would be that one; something pretty and feminine being wielded by feminine people to destroy those that stand against them.

I still get chills just thinking about it. The subversiveness. The pure fucking cleverness and originality. The deceptively subtle brilliance of it all.

Wow.

The Jasmine Throne is probably one of the most hyped books of the year. And believe it or not? It does live up to the hype. It blows the hype sky-high.

It’s out today. You do not want to miss this one.

The post Look Like the Innocent Flower, Kill Them With Your Blossoms: The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday #38!

We have SIX releases-of-interest this week, ranging from portal-jumping to Indian princesses to Jewish golems traversing the world!

Into the Lightning Gate (Gates Saga #1) by Robert Roth
Representation: Gay MC, M/M or mlm, minor nonbinary characters
on 7th June 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Goodreads

"An intriguing, well-constructed thriller about a tech whiz on a journey of discovery.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Into the Lightning Gate is a strong setup for the coming series.” —Foreword Clarion Reviews

What happens when you find out everything you know is a lie?

Cameron Maddock always knew he was different somehow. Not just for the obvious reasons, either, but in ways he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Still, he was at the top of his game, and life was good.

But Cam discovers just how different he really is when an ordinary day turns into a nasty encounter with an otherworldly foe. Suddenly, he’s running for his life in a high-stakes, interdimensional game of cat and mouse that leads him to places he’s never even imagined. And after a pair of mysterious new companions miraculously come to his aid, Cam discovers that he’s at the center of a cosmic conspiracy that shakes the foundations of everything he knows.

Don’t miss this fun, fast-paced, sci-fi action thriller that will keep you guessing right up until the explosive ending!

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I stumbled across this one somewhere by complete accident, and I’m not sure what to expect – I haven’t seen many reviews for it. But it sounds…potentially interesting??? And it’s out today!

The Unraveling by Benjamin Rosenbaum
on 8th June 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Goodreads

In the distant future somewhere in the galaxy, a society has emerged where everyone has multiple bodies, cybernetics has abolished privacy, and individual and family success within the rigid social system is reliant upon instantaneous social approbation.
Young Fift is an only child of the staid gender, struggling to maintain their position in the system while developing an intriguing friendship with the poorly-publicized bioengineer Shria–somewhat controversial, since Shria is bail-gendered.
In time, Fift and Shria unintentionally wind up at the center of a scandalous art spectacle which turns into the early stages of a multi-layered revolution against their strict societal system. Suddenly they become celebrities and involuntary standard-bearers for the upheaval.
Fift is torn between the survival of Shria and the success of their family cohort; staying true to their feelings and caving under societal pressure. Whatever Fift decides will make a disproportionately huge impact on the future of the world. What’s a young staid to do when the whole world is watching?

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I loved this, I still love it, and if you want wildly original sci-fi with literally out-of-this-world worldbuilding??? Especially with neo-genders and with whimsy mixed into your revolution??? YOU WILL LOVE IT TOO.

The Jasmine Throne (Burning Kingdoms, #1) by Tasha Suri
Representation: Southeast Asian-coded cast, F/F or wlw
on 8th June 2021
Genres: High Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads

Author of Empire of Sand and Realm of Ash Tasha Suri's The Jasmine Throne, beginning a new trilogy set in a world inspired by the history and epics of India, in which a captive princess and a maidservant in possession of forbidden magic become unlikely allies on a dark journey to save their empire from the princess's traitor brother.

Imprisoned by her dictator brother, Malini spends her days in isolation in the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of the powerful, magical deathless waters — but is now little more than a decaying ruin.

Priya is a maidservant, one among several who make the treacherous journey to the top of the Hirana every night to clean Malini’s chambers. She is happy to be an anonymous drudge, so long as it keeps anyone from guessing the dangerous secret she hides.

But when Malini accidentally bears witness to Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a vengeful princess seeking to depose her brother from his throne. The other is a priestess seeking to find her family. Together, they will change the fate of an empire.

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One of the most-hyped books of the year, and deservedly so. Hoping to have my review for this one up tomorrow for its release day!

The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid
Representation: Hungarian-coded cast, half-Jewish MC, disabled love interest, minor F/F or wlw
on 8th June 2021
Genres: High Fantasy
Goodreads

In the vein of Naomi Novik’s New York Times bestseller Spinning Silver and Katherine Arden’s national bestseller The Bear and the Nightingale, this unforgettable debut— inspired by Hungarian history and Jewish mythology—follows a young pagan woman with hidden powers and a one-eyed captain of the Woodsmen as they form an unlikely alliance to thwart a tyrant.

In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline—her father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king’s blood sacrifice, Évike is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered.

But when monsters attack the Woodsmen and their captive en route, slaughtering everyone but Évike and the cold, one-eyed captain, they have no choice but to rely on each other. Except he’s no ordinary Woodsman—he’s the disgraced prince, Gáspár Bárány, whose father needs pagan magic to consolidate his power. Gáspár fears that his cruelly zealous brother plans to seize the throne and instigate a violent reign that would damn the pagans and the Yehuli alike. As the son of a reviled foreign queen, Gáspár understands what it’s like to be an outcast, and he and Évike make a tenuous pact to stop his brother.

As their mission takes them from the bitter northern tundra to the smog-choked capital, their mutual loathing slowly turns to affection, bound by a shared history of alienation and oppression. However, trust can easily turn to betrayal, and as Évike reconnects with her estranged father and discovers her own hidden magic, she and Gáspár need to decide whose side they’re on, and what they’re willing to give up for a nation that never cared for them at all.

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My review of this one went up yesterday, but the tl;dr version is that I consider The Wolf and the Woodsman absolutely unmissable. It’s dark, it’s gorgeous, it’s vicious, it has a tormented prince kneeling to the wolf-girl who loves to torment him, and it’s brilliant. YOU NEED TO READ THIS!

The Hidden Palace (The Golem and the Jinni, #2) by Helene Wecker
Representation: Ethnically Jewish MC, Arabic MC
on 8th June 2021
Genres: Historical Fantasy
Goodreads

In this enthralling historical epic, set in New York City and the Middle East in the years leading to World War I— the long-awaited follow-up to the acclaimed New York Times bestseller The Golem and the Jinni—Helene Wecker revisits her beloved characters Chava and Ahmad as they confront unexpected new challenges in a rapidly changing human world.

Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay, able to hear the thoughts and longings of the people around her and compelled by her nature to help them. Ahmad is a jinni, a perpetually restless and free-spirited creature of fire, imprisoned in the shape of a man. Fearing they’ll be exposed as monsters, these magical beings hide their true selves and pretend to be human—just two more immigrants in the bustling world of 1900s Manhattan. Having encountered each other under calamitous circumstances, Chava and Ahmad’s lives are now entwined—but they’re not yet certain of what they mean to each other. 

Each has unwittingly affected the humans around them. Park Avenue heiress Sophia Winston, whose brief encounter with Ahmad left her with a strange illness that makes her shiver with cold, travels to the Middle East to seek a cure. There she meets a tempestuous female jinni who’s been banished from her tribe. Back in New York, in a tenement on the Lower East Side, a little girl named Kreindel helps her rabbi father build a golem they name Yossele—not knowing that she’s about to be sent to an orphanage uptown, where the hulking Yossele will become her only friend and protector.

Spanning the tumultuous years from the turn of the twentieth century to the beginning of World War I, The Hidden Palace follows these lives and others as they collide and interleave. Can Chava and Ahmad find their places in the human world while remaining true to each other? Or will their opposing natures and desires eventually tear them apart—especially once they encounter, thrillingly, other beings like themselves?

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I reread The Golem and the Jinni earlier this year to prepare myself, and I am READY!

Girls at the Edge of the World by Laura Brooke Robson
Representation: Queer MCs, F/F or wlw
on 8th June 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Goodreads

Set in a world on the edge of an apocalyptic flood, this heart-stoppingly romantic fantasy debut is perfect for fans of Rachel Hartman and Rae Carson.

In a world bound for an epic flood, only a chosen few are guaranteed safe passage into the new world once the waters recede. The Kostrovian royal court will be saved, of course, along with their guards. But the fate of the court's Royal Flyers, a lauded fleet of aerial silk performers, is less certain. Hell-bent on survival, Principal Flyer, Natasha Koskinen, will do anything to save the Flyers, who are the only family she's ever known. Even if anything means molding herself into the type of girl who could be courted by Prince Nikolai. But unbeknownst to Natasha, her newest recruit, Ella Neves, is driven less by her desire to survive the floods than her thirst for revenge. And Ella's mission could put everything Natasha has worked for in peril.

As the oceans rise, so too does an undeniable spark between the two flyers. With the end of the world looming, and dark secrets about the Kostrovian court coming to light, Ella and Natasha can either give in to despair . . . or find a new reason to live.

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I’ve been looking forward to Girls at the Edge of the World for ages, even if I’m still kind of unclear on what exactly it’s about. It just sounds so awesome I’m excited anyway???

That’s it for this week! Did I miss any new releases you’re looking forward to? Will you be reading any of these? Let me know!

The post Must-Have Monday #38! appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Delivers on Every Dark Promise: The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid

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.

The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid
Representation: Hungarian-coded cast, Half-Jewish MC, disabled love interest, Dominance/submission, minor F/F or wlw
on 8th June 2021
Genres: High Fantasy
ISBN: 1529100739
Goodreads

In the vein of Naomi Novik’s New York Times bestseller Spinning Silver and Katherine Arden’s national bestseller The Bear and the Nightingale, this unforgettable debut— inspired by Hungarian history and Jewish mythology—follows a young pagan woman with hidden powers and a one-eyed captain of the Woodsmen as they form an unlikely alliance to thwart a tyrant.

In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline—her father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king’s blood sacrifice, Évike is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered.

But when monsters attack the Woodsmen and their captive en route, slaughtering everyone but Évike and the cold, one-eyed captain, they have no choice but to rely on each other. Except he’s no ordinary Woodsman—he’s the disgraced prince, Gáspár Bárány, whose father needs pagan magic to consolidate his power. Gáspár fears that his cruelly zealous brother plans to seize the throne and instigate a violent reign that would damn the pagans and the Yehuli alike. As the son of a reviled foreign queen, Gáspár understands what it’s like to be an outcast, and he and Évike make a tenuous pact to stop his brother.

As their mission takes them from the bitter northern tundra to the smog-choked capital, their mutual loathing slowly turns to affection, bound by a shared history of alienation and oppression. However, trust can easily turn to betrayal, and as Évike reconnects with her estranged father and discovers her own hidden magic, she and Gáspár need to decide whose side they’re on, and what they’re willing to give up for a nation that never cared for them at all.

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~‘Kneel.’
~viciousness is a virtue
~truly tortured and tormented love interest
~who says there’s only one kind of magic?
~hardcore Seven Devils by Florence and the Machine energy
~SOMEONE BURN THAT DISGUSTING CROWN
~the myths that make a nation

The Wolf and the Woodsman doesn’t play nice.

This is a book for the darkest of us. For the wolf-girls and the broken boys. For those of us with sharp teeth and sharper claws and sharpest of all, our hearts. This is a book for those who don’t believe in – and don’t want – happy fairytale endings. It’s for those of us who are disappointed by every story that promises us darkness but only flirts with shadows. It’s a book for those who aren’t interested in turning the dark into light, but want instead to embrace all that it is; for those who don’t want to tame it, but to master it.

To make it kneel.

I don’t mean that The Wolf and the Woodsman is grimdark, because I don’t think it is. Grimdark portrays the world as a…well, a grim, dark place, where optimism is laughable and violence is brutal, commonplace, and not worth commenting upon. The Wolf and the Woodsman isn’t a story that insists that humans are inherently terrible and the world is awful. Some humans are terrible, and some parts of the world are awful, sure. And it can get complicated sometimes. But the entrancing, impressive darkness of The Wolf and the Woodsman is in the heart of Évike herself, and the way in which she isn’t punished for it by the narrative.

My most spiteful self, and perhaps my truest.

Évike is an orphan in a pagan village where all woman wield magical abilities given to them by their gods. Évike, as well as having no mother, also has no magic, and those two facts together are all the justification her peers – and their elders – need to ostracise and abuse her. She’s grown up bitter and vicious and, honestly, there is not one part of me that begrudges her that. Especially since, when the king’s Woodsmen appear to claim and take away a seer – the young woman who happens to be Évike’s worst tormentor – Évike is summarily offered up in her place, a deception that is a death sentence not just because none of the girls taken ever come back, but because Évike will, obviously, be killed when the king realises she’s not the seer he wanted.

It’s one thing to know that your people despise you. It’s another thing entirely to discover that they’ll happily offer you up as a, not even a sacrifice – that might have meaning – but a stop-gap. Because the Woodsmen are only going to come back to collect the seer when Évike’s lack of magic is discovered. Évike’s death won’t even mean anything.

But one of the Woodsmen isn’t what he seems, and Évike’s journey to the capital doesn’t go as anyone expects.

Fantasy Like You’ve Never Seen Before

From the very first page, when we’re introduced to the magic wielded by the other women of Keszi, I knew The Wolf and the Woodsman really was going to be different. Sometimes I feel like I’ve read everything the Fantasy genre has to offer, but of course that’s not true; what’s maybe more accurate is that English-speaking Fantasy is glutted with similar settings and stories pulled from Western European mythology, and at this point I’m more than tired of ’em. It’s a more selfish reason I’m so eager to jump on fantasies inspired by African or Asian cultures; the ethics of diversity matter to me immensely, but as a reader I’m also motivated by the jolt of newness that comes from stories that draw from cultures I don’t know. Those stories feel so fresh and unique and interesting because they’re intrinsically different from those steeped in the story-telling traditions I grew up with.

But The Wolf and the Woodsman feels a bit like a slap upside the head as a reminder that, yeah, I’m bored of Western European fantasy. I know next to nothing about Eastern Europe’s stories. I’ve never really thought about them. Even since moving to Finland, I’ve paid more attention to Nordic mythology and folklore, but still forgot to consider the traditions of the countries that are now my next-door neighbours.

What I’m trying to say is that The Wolf and the Woodsman has the same thrilling sense of newness to it – which is not really newness, but new-to-me-ness – that books like Tasha Suri’s Empire of Sand, or The Unbroken by CL Clark, do. Reid is drawing from somewhere much closer to home than India or North Africa, but Hungary is just as unfamiliar to me. Maybe even more unfamiliar to me, in some ways. And I think that’s something that English-speaking readers really need to know: assuming you’re like me, and are only intimately familiar with fantasy as it’s evolved in North America and Western Europe, this book feels like a breath of fresh air. I can quite honestly say this is fantasy like I’ve never seen it before.

And it’s brilliant.

The unfamiliar aspects of the worldbuilding seem superficial – unfamiliar magic powers, pagan traditions I’ve not encountered before – but at the same time, they strike a deep note, make a music that runs all through the book, hypnotic and new and beautiful. Somehow, it’s more than new magic systems and monsters; there’s something I can’t name, something that goes right to the core and heart of this story, that proudly sets it apart from more familiar stories. I don’t have the technical language to tell you exactly what it is, to dissect The Wolf and the Woodsman open and point to how pulling from different mythologies has flowed outwards from the book’s premise to affect and alter its every aspect. I can only tell you that it is so.

Rich and Dark

Other than drawing from unfamiliar-to-me folklore, what really sets The Wolf and the Woodsman apart is the main character Évike. I already mentioned that she’s bitter and vicious, and that the narrative doesn’t punish her for it, but I want to drive the point home again because that is just so revolutionary. Even in Adult Fantasy, women aren’t often allowed to be this sharp, this unlikable, and when they are the story usually forces them to soften, to lay down their claws and become something gentler in order to be granted their happy ending.

But I had tried kindness. I had tried sheathing my claws. It only made it easier for her to strike me down again.

Reid doesn’t declaw her heroine. Évike does eventually learn that there are people who will treat her gently, and that she doesn’t always need to strike first because not everyone is out to belittle or hurt her. But she is as sharp-edged at the end of the book as she is at the start, and just as hungry, just as unfeminine. She is a wolf-girl on the first page and she is a wolf-girl to the last, and I adored that about her, and I adored it about the book that she is allowed to be that, unflinchingly and unapologetically.

He wanted me dead when I was mute and lowing under is father’s blade, and he still wants me dead now, when I am snarling back at him and showing all my teeth.

One of the aspects of this that I think I have to talk about is Évike’s sexuality. Évike is what might, in our modern world, be called a dominatrix; certainly there’s no way to pretend that she doesn’t hunger for the submission of her sex-and-love interest, that she doesn’t draw pleasure from tormenting him. There are no whips and chains, and the sex itself isn’t what I’d consider explicit, but it’s the emotional hungers, and the emotional dynamic and give-and-take between Évike and her Woodsman, that are unmistakably thick with the Dominance/submission aspects of BDSM. Not codified, careful, modern D/s; Évike and her sort-of-partner have no safeword, for example.

But I’ve seen jokes about ‘take a shot every time Gáspár kneels’, and darlings, if you do, you’re going to have one hell of a hangover in the morning. If you don’t end up with alcohol poisoning outright.

Because Gáspár, tormented as he is, loves to kneel to Évike, and Évike loves to make him.

And this is all tied up with – it’s not gentle. It’s not fond. It’s raw and rich and vital, it’s gleeful and triumphant, it’s greedy and sharp and tortured, it’s hungry, it’s dark in a luscious, thrilling way that stories generally aren’t allowed to be outside of erotica. The Wolf and the Woodsman isn’t erotica, but it is still fiercely sexual, more than a little bit twisted, utterly delicious. And I cannot emphasise enough that this simply isn’t a romantic/sexual dynamic we get to see very often, especially with the heroine as the Dominant of the pair.

And Évike is never punished for this. The narrative never punishes her for her sexuality, or her hungers, as twisted as some people might consider them (they’re really not, but I can understand that they may be shocking to some readers). If anything, The Wolf and the Woodsman revels in Évike and Gáspár’s dynamic and relationship, and I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed it.

This isn’t the only darkness in this book – far from it. The Wolf and the Woodsman is no-holds-barred when it comes to ruthlessness, body-horror magic, religious fanaticism, the cruelties of those in power, the bloodstained tapestry of history. An incredibly important thread of this story is Évike discovering her Jewish heritage – her mother may have been a pagan, but her father was not, and in being dragged from her home Évike is also introduced to her father’s people, religion, and culture – and unfortunately, part of that includes discovering antisemitism, both hearing it and witnessing it. The image of a Jewish man forced to dance in pig’s blood is horrific even to goyim like me; I can’t imagine how much worse it might hit a Jewish reader. But I do tentatively think that Reid manages not to cross the line into misery-porn.

That said – I acknowledge that the body-horror aspect is relatively low compared to some books the memory of which I have tried hard to bleach out of my brain, but seriously, it’s there. The magic of the Woodsmen is specifically drawn from self-mutilation, and readers should be braced for that. It never got so gory I had to DNF it, but I did sometimes have to take breaks from the book. Consider carefully whether these are topics you want to read about/can handle!

The Writing

I can’t believe this is Reid’s debut, folx. It’s just so incredibly polished, appallingly gorgeous, and scythe-sharp clever. I’ve already talked a little about the use of folklore and mythology, but only in the sense that the Hungarian folklore is beautifully new to me. It’s not as simple as Reid pulling inspiration from somewhere unfamiliar, though; there’s the way she’s flipped the tapestry over to show us the underside, all the knots and stitches that lie beneath what we think of as a nation. One of the biggest thematic elements of this book has got to be the brutally honest, and honestly brutal, depiction of nation-building; the deft dissection of whom a land belongs to, who gets to call a place home, how many disparate pieces it takes to make a nation.

“You’re just like any other Southerner, thinking you can tear the North apart and eat its most tender bits. You can’t eat a thing that’s still alive.”

The conflict between the various pagan groups and the dominant ‘Patrifaith’ – a recognisable stand-in for Christianity, more or less – and between the Patrifaith and the Jews are basically the driving forces behind the entire novel, since it’s the king’s desire to make use of pagan magics that is the reason Évike is taken from her home. The hypocrisy of practicality and ‘making use’ of others, versus religious fanaticism, is the main schism being driven through the nobility, even as those Patritian nobles only are noble because they lay claim to ancient pagan bloodlines.

I’ve grown so weary of meager Patritian kindnesses with their ugly underbellies, like a gleaming handful of holly berries: they look sweet, but it will kill you to swallow them.

Also – I’m not Jewish, or Christian, or Évike’s kind of pagan, but I absolutely adored hitow the different religions and traditions were quietly compared.

Zsigmond scrawls questions in the the very margins of his scrolls, underlining passages that he agrees with and marking up ones that he doesn’t. All of it baffles me. Can you believe in something while still running your hand over its every contour, feeling for bumps and bruises, like a farmer trying to pick the best, roundest peach?

“That is the only way to truly believe in something,” Zsigmond says. “When you’ve weighed and measured it yourself.”

And none of this is info-dumped on us; it all unfolds elegantly, page by page. Reid never lectures us, just presents Évike’s story to us and lets us unravel and analyse what we’re shown for ourselves. Which is one of my favourite literary strategies, for the record.

One detail I do have to mention is the turul, a magical bird that has an incredibly important place in the beliefs of Évike and other pagans. As I’ve said, I know next to nothing about Hungarian mythology, but I’m fascinated by mythological animals in particular, so I did go and look up the bird that is the immensely important Quest Object of The Wolf and the Woodsman. And one of the first things I found is that, as a symbol, it’s been co-opted by far-right groups for a big chunk of the 20th and 21st centuries: specifically, antisemitic groups. And I feel like that adds even more depth, even more layers, to this book, because it’s a half-Jewish pagan who goes after the turul, one who does so in huge part out of a desire to safeguard her father’s people. There’s something defiantly subversive about reclaiming a symbol from antisemitic asshats and turning it into something that will, hopefully, instead save the Jewish people of the nation. I don’t have the cultural context, or the smarts, to unravel all the layers of that, but I love it, and needed to include it in my review, because wow does that add more to this book.

Honestly, I do not know how Reid packed so much into just over 400 pages. I very much suspect it’s going to take a few more rereads before I pick up on even half of everything woven into this story. The Wolf and the Woodsman just has that much depth, that many layers. There’s no way to unpack it all in one read-through.

And this is all without talking about Reid’s prose, which is gorgeous. When I realised this book was going to be narrated in first-person present tense, I was immediately wary, because most of the time I hate that. But it not only worked perfectly here, Reid’s actual writing style is just a joy to read.

Each step forward and our twined fate hardens, as unyielding as steel.

I should wring his kindnesses out of me like water from my hair.

I sleep only in short bursts, the night seamed through with dreams.

All in All?

This is a gods’-damned masterpiece, in so many ways, and I cannot recommend it strongly enough. And if you still need convincing, you can read an excerpt over here on gizmodo.

It’s out on Tuesday. You’ve still got time to preorder if you haven’t yet. I really hope you do, because The Wolf and the Woodsman is, without question, one of the best books of the year – and missing out on it would be a tragedy.

The post Delivers on Every Dark Promise: The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Fine, Fine, Awful: Three Mini-Reviews

Quite often with ARCs I don’t have strong feelings about – especially ones I DNF – I write something up for Netgalley, but don’t make a post for them here on the blog. So here’re are some mini-reviews on a few ARCs that were either okay or awful…

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.

Hall of Smoke (Hall of Smoke, #1) by H.M. Long
on 19th January 2021
Genres: Epic Fantasy
ISBN: 1789094984
Goodreads

An epic fantasy featuring warrior priestesses and fickle gods at war.

Hessa is an Eangi: a warrior priestess of the Goddess of War, with the power to turn an enemy's bones to dust with a scream. Banished for disobeying her goddess's command to murder a traveller, she prays for forgiveness alone on a mountainside.

While she is gone, raiders raze her village and obliterate the Eangi priesthood. Grieving and alone, Hessa - the last Eangi - must find the traveller, atone for her weakness and secure her place with her loved ones in the High Halls. As clans from the north and legionaries from the south tear through her homeland, slaughtering everyone in their path, Hessa strives to win back her goddess' favour.

Beset by zealot soldiers, deceitful gods, and newly-awakened demons at every turn, Hessa burns her path towards redemption and revenge. But her journey reveals a harrowing truth: the gods are dying and the High Halls of the afterlife are fading. Soon Hessa's trust in her goddess weakens with every unheeded prayer.
Thrust into a battle between the gods of the Old World and the New, Hessa realizes there is far more on the line than securing a life beyond her own death. Bigger, older powers slumber beneath the surface of her world. And they're about to wake up.

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Hall of Smoke is…perfectly adequate? On paper, it should have been a book I adored, with warring deities and religious secrets and culture clashes…but for some reason I never quite clicked with it. For the most part I don’t blame the book for that – sometimes it just happens, you know? – but two genuine flaws were a) I saw the ‘big twist’ coming from a mile away, simply due to familiarity with the genre and its patterns, so I was never invested in a huge chunk of the plotline, nor affected whatsoever when the reveal finally came, and b) Hessa’s relationship with fate was incredibly confusing. Multiple times, various gods and mortals acting on behalf of the gods don’t kill her because she is, supposedly, the one who is fated to do [insert major spoiler here]. But how this is determined, or why she’s the only one who can do the thing, is…never explained? It felt majorly handwaved, like her enemies didn’t do the smart thing every time it came up Because Plot, not for any real reason.

It’s an okay book, it just wasn’t great. I seriously doubt I’ll be picking up the sequel.

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.

The Dead and the Dark by Courtney Gould
Representation: Lesbian MC, Bisexual MC, F/F or wlw, secondary M/M or mlm
on 3rd August 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Urban Fantasy
ISBN: 1250762014
Goodreads

Courtney Gould’s thrilling debut The Dead and the Dark is about the things that lurk in dark corners, the parts of you that can’t remain hidden, and about finding home in places―and people―you didn’t expect.

The Dark has been waiting for far too long, and it won't stay hidden any longer.

Something is wrong in Snakebite, Oregon. Teenagers are disappearing, some turning up dead, the weather isn’t normal, and all fingers seem to point to TV’s most popular ghost hunters who have just returned to town. Logan Ortiz-Woodley, daughter of TV's ParaSpectors, has never been to Snakebite before, but the moment she and her dads arrive, she starts to get the feeling that there's more secrets buried here than they originally let on.

Ashley Barton’s boyfriend was the first teen to go missing, and she’s felt his presence ever since. But now that the Ortiz-Woodleys are in town, his ghost is following her and the only person Ashley can trust is the mysterious Logan. When Ashley and Logan team up to figure out who—or what—is haunting Snakebite, their investigation reveals truths about the town, their families, and themselves that neither of them are ready for. As the danger intensifies, they realize that their growing feelings for each other could be a light in the darkness.

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The Dead and the Dark is, I think, a book that some readers will adore, but which was mostly wasted on me. It had a great number of twists and turns, and I liked all of the characters and that Gould wasn’t afraid to go there when I was sure she wouldn’t. The writing was good – I’d happily read another book by Gould, so long as it had a pretty different premise – although I wasn’t a fan of the multiple time skips; at numerous points the story would skip a week or two, and while I see why Gould did it, it made parts of the narrative feel disjointed to me. I also would have been much happier if the two main characters could have been queer and friends rather than pushed into some kind of romance – a relationship I didn’t buy into at all; I didn’t feel like they had any chemistry or any kind of real connection.

I was also really disappointed that some of the most interesting bits and pieces – like the ghost-detecting equipment – was never explained, and the final reveal of the ‘villain’ felt like it came out of nowhere. Although maybe I was just too dim to catch the clues?

All in all, perfectly okay, but in no ways memorable.

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.

For the Wolf (Wilderwood, #1) by Hannah F. Whitten
on 1st June 2021
Genres: Fantasy
ISBN: 0316592781
Goodreads

The first daughter is for the Throne.The second daughter is for the Wolf.

For fans of Uprooted and The Bear and the Nightingale comes a dark fantasy novel about a young woman who must be sacrificed to the legendary Wolf of the Wood to save her kingdom. But not all legends are true, and the Wolf isn't the only danger lurking in the Wilderwood.

As the only Second Daughter born in centuries, Red has one purpose-to be sacrificed to the Wolf in the Wood in the hope he'll return the world's captured gods.
Red is almost relieved to go. Plagued by a dangerous power she can't control, at least she knows that in the Wilderwood, she can't hurt those she loves. Again.

But the legends lie. The Wolf is a man, not a monster. Her magic is a calling, not a curse. And if she doesn't learn how to use it, the monsters the gods have become will swallow the Wilderwood-and her world-whole.

The author has provided a list of content warnings here.

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I feel sorry for For the Wolf, because it has to debut in the same year as The Wolf and the Woodsman – and although their stories are incredibly different, they are inevitably going to be compared against each other, for a few reasons

Their titles are similar enough, with that Wolf, to tie them togetherThey’re published a week apartForests feature heavily in bothBoth have been compared to Uprooted and Bear and the NightingaleBoth feature unfeminine, unlikable protagonistsBoth feature ‘monstrous’ male love interestsBoth feature body-horror magicBoth have been pitched as ‘genuinely dark’ fantasy.

I feel sorry for For the Wolf because it fails abysmally on every point – bar the bit about featuring a forest – and it might be a bit less obvious if The Wolf and the Woodsman weren’t right there, knocking it out of the park on every level, from every angle.

I’ll have a proper review up for The Wolf and the Woodsman soon, but my feelings for For the Wolf are pretty much unmitigated disgust. Dark fantasy? Please. I was writing darker fic when I was 12. As for the much-hyped ‘monster boyfriend’ – the love interest is not any kind of monster. He’s a broody and self-sacrificing hero, not monster – which is fine, but don’t promise me monster boyfriends when you’re not going to deliver. The magic system is superficially body-horror, I guess, in that it revolves around blood – but it’s the least gory blood-magic I have ever seen, which is saying something, and it certainly isn’t scary or horrifying. And Redarys, aka Red (which, thanks, I stretched my eyes quite nicely with that eye-roll) is another angsty, self-sacrificing heroine with very little personality. The prose is meh at best, mind-numbing at worst. It reads like very poor YA, not the dark and boundary-pushing Adult Fantasy it purports to be.

If you’re craving dark fantasy with a heroine who is angry and sharp-edged and vicious, with a story that explores so many different kinds of monstrousness, do yourself a favor and skip For the Wolf entirely. The Wolf and the Woodsman is out on Tuesday, and I promise, it does everything For the Wolf tries to do, but infinitely better.

Certainly comparing it to Uprooted is an insult to Novik. (Can’t speak for Bear and the Nightingale, since I’ve never managed to finish it.)

I hate writing hate-on reviews, but there you go. My next write-up should either be The Wolf and the Woodsman or The Jasmine Throne, and I promise I have much more positive feelings about them both!

The post Fine, Fine, Awful: Three Mini-Reviews appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Like Shotgunning Summer Sunshine: One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

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.

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston
Representation: Bisexual MC, lesbian Asian-American love interest, F/F or wlw, trans secondary character, Black secondary character, Jewish secondary character, secondary M/M or mlm, queer cast
on 1st June 2021
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Urban Fantasy
Goodreads

From the New York Times bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue comes a new romantic comedy that will stop readers in their tracks...

For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.

But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train.

Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August’s day when she needed it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things, after all.

Casey McQuiston’s One Last Stop is a magical, sexy, big-hearted romance where the impossible becomes possible as August does everything in her power to save the girl lost in time.

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~pancakes
~subways are Romantic now
~psychic roommate
~drag queens!!!
~every woman should own a pocketknife
~assembling a bed = sexy AF

I want to write love letters to this book. I want to write it terrible poetry. I want to buy a copy for every one of my friends and shove it in their faces. Hells yes, this is the book to kick off Pride! There cannot possibly be a better way to start Pride Month than with One Last Stop!

Where am I supposed to even start with the gazillion reasons that you need to read this book???

If you’ve already read Red, White, and Royal Blue, then you don’t need me to tell you that this is awesome – it’s another Casey McQuiston novel, of course it’s awesome – but if you haven’t. Well.

What if I tell you that I got sucked into the worst depression spiral I’ve had in months – and One Last Stop was still able to make me laugh? Gave me such a shot of serotonin, in fact, that I was back to my normal self – better than my normal self – after just two chapters?

I mean. Don’t stop taking your meds, folx. But One Last Stop is pure serotonin in book form.

August is an absolute delight of a protagonist, in huge part because she is not, in fact, the most delightful person. She’s not sweet and nice and friendly (at least at first glance); she’s awkward and suspicious and finds other people confusing at best, and she always carries a pocket-knife, and she Makes Plans for everything because she doesn’t know how to deal if she doesn’t. Before I even made it to chapter two, I adored her.

August, a suburban girl with a swimming pool of student loan debt and the social skills of a Pringles can

It doesn’t hurt that McQuiston has you cracking up at least once per page; I swear I almost broke my ereader with all the highlights of bits I had to read out loud to the hubby – and then repeat them because I was giggling too hard for him to make out what I was saying. SOCIAL SKILLS OF A PRINGLES CAN. Gods, it’s equal parts hysterical and relatable.

No worries August; there’s a reason everyone loves Pringles.

One Last Stop opens with August arriving in New York (from where, we do not yet know) and finding herself a room. With New York prices, that means a roommate. In fact, it means several roommates, all of whom seem utterly bizarre in very human ways; the kind of weird that immediately makes a character feel like a real person, because surely no one can make this up. One’s psychic, one’s an artist, one is… Wes.

Her mental field guide to making friends is a two-page pamphlet that just says: DON’T

It’s fine, everything’s FIIIIIIIIIIINE.

Anyway. She gets a job and her classes start and then…the subway.

The hottest girl August has ever seen just took one look at her and said, “Yikes.”

The subway – the Q – is where she meets Jane. Who is gorgeous, and ridiculously cool, and open-handedly kind.

And is stuck in some kind of subway-related time-slip. She’s supposed to be in the 1970s, and she’s…not.

It’s a thing. And it’s not fine.

One of the (many) things that surprised and delighted me was how quickly One Last Stop revealed its supernatural elements; yes, Jane’s situation is described in the blurb, so it’s not a surprise, but I thought it would take longer for August to figure it out.

“Wait. Holy shit. She is always wearing the exact same thing.”

“You only just noticed she has one outfit?”

“I don’t know! It’s ripped jeans and a leather jacket! Every lesbian I’ve ever met has that outfit!”

But that was me underestimating her. She figures it out, and then…then she’s gonna fix it. Solve it. Help Jane.

It really has nothing to do with Jane being breathtakingly wonderful. August would help her regardless.

…But the being breathtakingly wonderful doesn’t hurt. Except for how it does, because August is falling for her and that doesn’t complicate things at all.

Jane laughs, which is rocketing straight up August’s list of favorite sounds in the universe. She’s gonna trap it in a shell like a sea witch. It’s fine.

I don’t often get super-invested in romantic arcs. In a lot of Fantasy, it’s an afterthought or an extra, not usually integral to the overall story; here, of course, the romance is the story, and the fantastical elements are…well, they’re super important, but they’re also not the point. The point is the love story, and I mean, there shouldn’t be so much anticipation building and building throughout the book when you know they’re going to get together. Because of course they are! But McQuiston did it beautifully in Red, White, & Royal Blue and has done it once again: presented a romance I cannot help but fall for.

I am in love with August and Jane’s love. There, I said it. AND I REGRET NOTHING!

August is an MC who I think almost everyone can identify with; and those who don’t see themselves in her will still adore her, because she is so believably, humanly odd, and anxious, with her pocketknife and her notebooks full of field notes about Other Humans. She is so capable, and she has so much grit, and she has a prickly outside but only because she is raw and soft inside her shell. We love her because she’s us.

And then you have Jane, who is so much larger than life, who is a hardcore, honest-to-the-gods punk and definitely knows how to make and use a molotov cocktail. She’s sexy and confident and brave and unselfconscious. She’s dazzling. She’s the love interest who makes us swoon. And she is not a damsel in distress, but she does need rescuing, and something about the juxtaposition of that – the strength and need, the confidence and the vulnerability, the badassery and the fear of what she’s trapped in – I am not used to analysing love interests, but I think McQuiston nailed it. We love August because she’s us; we love Jane because we want to be her. And help her. And maybe kiss her. PERHAPS.

August thinks she’s going to need more notebooks. It’ll take a million to hold this girl.

The dynamic between them, the way the relationship develops… I mean. I wanted to cackle and also to cheer and there was definitely some swooning going on. There are some Delightful Tropes. There are moments of silliness. And there is so much heart in this; not passion (although there’s that too) but, just…caring. Both of these girls have such huge hearts, and so much kindness and compassion to give, to give to each other. Watching how that – that kind of intrinsic trying-to-be-a-good-person-ness – evolved into romantic love? Is beautiful.

And so, so funny.

And, I mean. I’m ace, so I hope that gives a bit more weight to my declaration that oh yes, the sexy is here, there, and everywhere. It’s so well done??? I shouldn’t have been surprised after Red, White & Royal Blue, but still – wow. It’s hot and wonderful and there’s all the emotion and giggles and it’s just genuinely *chef’s kiss* brilliant.

she grabs August by the chin and kisses her hard and brilliant, an open-mouthed exhale, shotgunning summer sunshine.

Zooming out from August and Jane for a minute… This is a romantic comedy; there is romance, and there is a lot of comedy. But it’s also deeply and profoundly a queer book, a book about modern queerness and queer history, about the queer experience, about the found-family so many queer people end up building and forming and falling into. The one we make, not necessarily because our blood-family is bad, but because there is something special, a relief and a joy, in finding Our People, in forming a pack of People Like Us. It’s more than ‘oh, you’re not cishet either?’ I’m ace, but I don’t magically click with every other ace person on the planet. It doesn’t work like that. It’s not about the specifics of your sexuality and/or gender identity matching those of the people around you. It’s about being queer. Queerness as an identity. As a philosophy, as an outlook, as a way of existing in the world and interacting with it. It means something slightly different for everyone, but it always means community. It always means family.

And that’s a huge part of One Last Stop. The romance is at the center of it all; of course it is. But the romance wouldn’t work without August’s support network, without the family she’s managed to find in New York. Without them teaching her how to let people in, I don’t see how she could ever have reached out to Jane, and then we wouldn’t have this book, and that would be a tragedy.

August and Jane are incredible – but so are the rest of the cast. The roommates, oh, the roommates!!! The drag queens, the fry cooks, even August’s mother – they all feel so real, like they’ll step out from the pages at any moment, or like you might step in, and either way you’ll be laughing till you cry because gods, they are all just awesome.

“I wish I were never born,” August moans into the floor.

“Retweet,” Wes says solemnly.

And I have to take a sec to mention how McQuiston quietly draws a line that goes Queer Past –> Queer Present. We don’t get taught queer history in school, and a lot of us don’t know much about it, and one of the most poignant moments in the book has got to be when August realises that this beautiful, glittery, celebratory event she’s at wouldn’t exist without the people like Jane having come before them and laid the groundwork, going to war for it. Without the rioters and the steel-toed boots and the demonstrations and the people who fought for it. There are many parts of the world still fighting – hells, who am I kidding, we’re all still fighting, the fight isn’t over yet. But we’ve come a long way from the 1970s, and I get to live the life I want because of all the people who came before me, and that is precious, it matters, and it was wonderful to see it acknowledged. I hope it inspires people to read up on and research our history. It’s important.

There is so much to One Last Stop. It has layers and layers like a stack of pancakes and there is so much syrup and everything about it is perfect. It’s about finding your feet and finding Your People and finding a romance for the ages. It’s about being weird and awkward and how there are people who will love you anyway, who will love you because of your weirdTM. It’s about blood-family and found-family and taking notes and Making Plans. It’s about finding your teeth and your laugh and your power, the power of being yourself, and yes I know how cheesy that sounds but deal with it, just because it’s cheesy doesn’t mean it’s not still true.

This is a book that will light you up inside, that will make you smile and grin and laugh out loud. It’s a book that makes the rest of the world disappear, drags you in and wraps you up and magics all the aches and pains and exhaustion away. It is indulgence; it is escapism; it is a delight. One Last Stop is a defibrillator that will shock your heart full of pure ridiculous fierce joy, and it is perfect. It is perfect.

It’s out today. Go buy your copy already!

The post Like Shotgunning Summer Sunshine: One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

In Short: May

I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to this month, but in hindsight I’m pleased with what I did get done. Taking part in Wyrd & Wonder for the second time was so much fun, and the push I needed to finish half a dozen rec lists I’ve been working on!

Read

I’ve read 14 books a month every month this year bar April, when I made it to 20. So dropping down to nine is…well, I’m not impressed with myself.

I don’t know what happened this month. My brain has been very fritzy; I keep starting new books, or even start rereading old ones, rather than…sitting down and finishing any. This is always an issue for me to some degree, but this month it was over the top.

Rosaline Palmer and One Last Stop were both the kind of feel-good-wonderfulness, with really addictive characters+prose+storylines, that settled me when I was feeling manic. Eating Authors was more soothing than addictive, but sometimes you need that too – although not when you’re feeling hungry, because the book is full of descriptions of ridiculously awesome meals and you will find your mouth watering more than once!

Banner of the Damned and Summer Sons were in-between: soothing and extremely addictive, strong enough to draw and hold my attention when it was flitting all over the place.

Our of 9 books, I read

5 women, 2 genderqueer folx, 1 man, and an anthology that was a collection of all three!8 books by white folx, one anthology of mixed authors

I think at this point it’s become obvious that I really suck at reading non-white authors. Still pondering what to do about this. I don’t want to read books that don’t interest me, but I know there are authors of colour writing stuff I love! Gotta look harder for them, I guess.

Books Reviewed

You could argue that my write up of Kushiel’s Dart was a review of a sort, although I didn’t intend for it to be; and I did write 10 mini-reviews for Top Ten Tuesday. Considering that I was much more focused on Wyrd & Wonder posts than reviews, I think that’s acceptable for this month, all together.

Books DNF-ed

There’s nothing wrong with Constellations of Scars, at least not that I found; I just had to DNF this one because it turns out I am still not ready to read books about abusive mothers. The mum in Scars is not physically abusive, but she is controlling and manipulative and is using her daughter, and I wasn’t able to handle it. Had to put it down and walk away.

For the Wolf, on the other hand…wow. I’m sorry, this is the book we’ve all been hyped for? Yawn. Seriously unimpressed. The horror isn’t horrifying, the Monster Boyfriend is not anything close to a monster, and the prose feels like very meh YA rather than great Adult. I actually double-checked that this is marked as Adult, because many of its flaws would have been forgivable if it had been YA (although I’d still have DNF-ed it) but no. This is supposed to be a dark, pushing-the-envelope Adult Fantasy, and it fails to deliver on absolutely every level.

ARCs Received

I finally managed to stop requesting things! Because I ran out of books to request Only 6 this month; down from 10 in April. I’m devouring Jasmine Throne, of course, but The Last Graduate and The Fallen are both going to require rereads of the first books in their series before I dive in to these new installments.

I’m still pretty sure they heard my shrieks of delight in Australia when I got approved for The Past is Red. NEW CATHERYNNE VALENTE, EXCUSE ME WHILE I HYPERVENTILATE AND FREAK THE FUCK OUT.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

ARCs Outstanding

I’m working – too slowly – on reviews for several of these, I swear! Specifically, my review for One Last Stop should be up tomorrow for the book’s release day!

Rec Lists & Misc

I got a fair bit done for Wyrd & Wonder! I wrote an essay-thing about fantasy vs reality through the lens of my fibromyalgia, and though I didn’t manage any of the other book tags, I did write up my Desert Island Reads as prompted by Imyril! And I took a minute to explain what the hell my Crescent Classics are – I hope to write more about them in future.

Then there were a bunch of rec lists!

Gentle Books For Trying Times (All fantasy, ofc)

13 Standout Fantasy Standalones!

10 Ridiculously Cool Magic Systems (a sequel to last year’s list!)

10 of the Coolest Magical Abilities in Fiction (again, a sequel to last year’s!)

And last of all, though not officially for Wyrd & Wonder, Queer SFF I’m Excited For This Pride!

Looking Forward

June is going to be so freaking epic!!! As previously mentioned, I already put together a list of the Queer SFF I’m looking forward to this month, and I swear I keep checking the clock to see how much longer it is until tomorrow, when the first of them will hit my ereader!

It’s also my blog’s second birthday tomorrow! I seriously can’t believe I’ve managed to keep this thing going so long. Or that I have followers and subscribers who actually want to read my rambles! Thank you to all of you, and to everyone else who stops by to read something I wrote <3

I hope everyone else had a great May, and that we all have an amazing June!

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