Siavahda's Blog, page 98

Must-Have Monday #11

It’s been a while since I did one of these (the last one was back in October!) but a recent conversation with the hubby made me realise it’s actually a lot of work to keep up to date on new releases. I’ve lost count of the number of blogs, journals, and newsletters I’m subscribed to, to say nothing of the authors I follow on Twitter. I even have a Google Calendar going back from March 2019 and extending to July 2021, marking all the releases of books I’m interested in – and I update it religiously as publication dates get pushed back or new books appear.

That’s more work than most people are willing (or able) to put in, right?

So I’m going to try and make these posts a regular thing again, so anyone following THIS blog can have the benefit of my calendar without having to make one yourself

Books That Make Me Smile

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

Today’s TTT theme is actually one I have a lot of practice making lists for, because one of my very best friends is always asking for ‘happy’ books – this is our unimaginative shorthand for books that just make you feel happy, even when they still contain adventures and drama and scary bits. There’s this bubbly-sparkly feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when reading a Happy book, and a particular kind of grin you find yourself grinning, and if you’re not careful you might end up hugging your ereader because FEELS!

Happy feels.

So: books that make me smile!

In Other Lands is always the first rec that comes to mind if someone asks me for Happy books, despite the fact that it’s far from fluffy. Elliot, a snarky bisexual, gets whisked away to magic school – and is distinctly unimpressed. Probably because fantasy-land glorifies war and its arts, and Elliot vehemently objects to swords and killing people! So weird, that. Like all of Brennan’s books, In Other Lands is packed full of laugh-out-loud moments while also being a clever dissection and subversion of, oh…all the fantasy tropes??? I’m pretty sure she hits them all.

There’s plenty of moments that will twist up your heart, too, but ultimately In Other Lands will leave you smiling.

Not fantasy??? Not even spec-fic??? Say it isn’t so! But it is so: Red, White & Royal Blue is possibly The Happiest Book; no other has turned me into such a flaily, delighted DORK as Casey’s debut. The biracial son of the American president falls for a prince of Great Britain; what could go wrong? It’s warm and sweet, but not shallow; McQuiston has written a book that’s insightful, incisive, and rich with depth, balancing humour with so much emotion. If you need a book to make you smile??? This is it!

Empress of Timbra follows two half-siblings – illegitimate cousins of the empress – as they discover each other’s existence, and are eventually swept up into politics. Despite the ages of the characters, this is absolutely a book adult readers can enjoy; I’m 27, and it’s one of my dearest favourites. I can’t put my finger on what it is that makes me wriggle with happy!feels, because there’s plenty of intrigue and adventure going on – succession! magic! pirates! – all of which come with sneaky twists and turns and plot-bits that’ll make you anxious for the characters. And yet, this is a book I’ve come back to over and over again when I’m feeling low, because reading it just makes me so damn happy.

Listen, I will never stop raving about Dragon With a Chocolate Heart, okay? This book is a sweet and wickedly clever book about an arrogant young dragon who decides she’s going to be a chocolate-maker – or else. Burgis could have written it as a simple fluff-piece, and that would have been fine! But she didn’t; there’s layers and layers going on here, enough that there’s plenty for adult readers to chew on and marvel over. It’s an MG book that doesn’t talk down to kids, which makes it truly excellent, and it’s a warm, sweet story that is just perfect to curl up with. Don’t dismiss it because it’s written for younger readers; I promise, there’s so much to love here!

Sometimes you just want beautiful things and magic and romance, am I right? I’m totally right, and Thief of Songs is the perfect book to sate that craving. It’s about beauty and art and love, it’s queer, the stakes are low enough to prevent anxiety but high enough to be interesting, and the whole thing just glows. This is another superficially simple book that has layers – about colonialism and unification and the values of art, particularly music – which turns it from what might have been fluffy into something rich and perfect. And everything from the characters to the magic to the worldbuilding seems designed to bring a smile to your face. I can’t recommend this one more strongly!

I know, I know – at this point, everyone knows The Goblin Emperor is a book that will make you smile, right? Well, it will, and it deserves a spot on this list. When the exiled half-goblin heir to the throne unexpectedly ends up emperor, shenanigans ensue – and it’s not comedic, although I realise ‘shenanigans’ kind of implies hilarity. No, instead this is a really lush, deep book, thoughtful and rich and very clever. There’s lots of different threads to keep you interested, but ultimately, I’ve always found it kind of impossible to describe just why this book makes you hug it to your chest. It just does. Maybe because it’s about being good and doing good, even in a complicated system that doesn’t want you? I don’t know, but if by some strange change you missed out on all the hype around Goblin Emperor, you really, really need to pick it up soon!

Shalador’s Lady is the second part of a duet within the greater Black Jewels series, and I wouldn’t read this one without having read the previous book, Shadow Queen. In Shadow Queen, Cassidy, who belongs to the Queen caste of her society but isn’t very powerful magically and isn’t conventionally pretty, agrees to go to a Territory devastated by war to teach the people there how to make a new life. By Shalador’s Lady, she’s proved herself to most of her court and her new people – but not all of them, which becomes a problem when her opposition seeks to undermine her. I realise this all sounds very political, and I guess it is, but it’s also a character-driven story about recovering from centuries of oppression – it’s about hope and rebuilding and celebrating what makes us different and what makes us the same. It’s about friendship and loyalty and love, and recovering from your scars – or learning to live with them. And it has scelties, who are absolutely amazing psychic dogs you do not want to miss out on – trust me on this. Shalador’s Lady has been my go-to book whenever I’m stressed out or sad for years now, and I hope it can make some of you smile as well.

Okay, so no one can accuse Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell of being a quick read – depending on your edition, it’s around 1000 pages long. But don’t be put off! I picked this up on a whim to reread a while back when I was struggling with depression, and wow was it perfect. This huge book is hugely delightful, the story of two Distinguished Gentlemen bringing magic back to England, and it’s written in this incredible wry voice with snarky little footnotes all over the place. This book is just so much fun, and it reads so easily that honestly, you won’t even notice the page count – you’ll be finished before you can believe it. There’s so much going on, so many different plotlines, and the book itself takes place over years and years, and yet – every word of it is just right. It’s absolutely gorgeous and very definitely grin-inducing!

Listen. Listen. I shouldn’t need to tell you anything about this book at all – all you should need to hear is that incredible title. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. !!! Has there ever been a more inviting title in all the world??? NO THERE HAS NOT. (Unless, perhaps, one counts the titles of the sequels…but that’s for another time!) Doesn’t the title alone make you smile??? How can it not?

This is a portal fantasy like you’ve never seen before; a girl called September gets whisked away to Fairyland by the Green Wind and has absolutely marvelous adventures. And I mean really, really marvelous. Marvelous in the way that reaches down deep and burnishes your heart until it shines. This is another book that might be targeted at younger readers, but is meant for absolutely everyone. Please, please read this book if you haven’t already. Your smile will light up the room if you do.

Finally, I wanted to wrap up this list with a book I never see anyone talking about – A Brother’s Price! And that cover is very much an in-joke, because WOW is it misleading. In Price‘s world, men are born much more rarely than women – the ratio seems to be something like 1:10 – and thus are guarded and cossetted and highly prized. So the traditional gender roles we know are kind of flipped around here, is what I’m saying. The cover does depict a scene from the book, but like…it’s very misleading, okay? Even if Jerin – the main character – does rescue one of the princesses very early in the book, he’s the one who gets treated like a princess most of the time.

In a good way, I promise!

And like the best kind of princess, Jerin can do some of his own rescuing. Which is important, because…rescuing becomes necessary.

It’s a super fun adventure-romance story with group marriage and a matriarchal society, the worldbuilding is awesome, and I really wish Spencer would return to the world of this book someday. But even if she doesn’t, A Brother’s Price is a perfect standalone – it was clearly written to be one – and an excellent non-conventional smile book!

That’s it from me! What are your favourite smile books?

The post Books That Make Me Smile appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

2020 Mid Year Freak Out Book Tag

I saw this tag over on Paper Fury, and it looked like fun! Sooo…I did it! I think her version is slightly different to the other one going around, but I liked the extra questions in this one!

How Much Have You Read?

Since I started keeping track of how many books I read a year, my record is 313. (That was waaay back in 2014). Since I started working full-time, that number obviously had to drop (sigh). But though I set myself lower goals now, I still aim to beat them (last year I managed 205 books, with a goal of just 150). I think I’m doing okay for 2020 so far – especially considering I’ve been having trouble concentrating and finishing the books I start!

What Have You Been Reading?

I had far too much fun making pie charts for this!

Genres Read Breakdown Jan-July 7th 2020

I don’t think anyone can be surprised that Fantasy’s dominated my reading this year – it’s overwhelmingly my favourite genre, and I’m rarely even tempted to wander outside it.

14 Sci-fi books in six months is actually a lot for me, I wasn’t expecting it to be so many.

And all of the ‘other’ books were still spec-fic this year – magical realism is as close as I’ve gotten to anything contemporary!

Author Gender Breakdown Jan-July 7th 2020

Take this chart with a pinch of salt – the number of genderqueer authors is to the best of my knowledge; I suspect in reality it’s actually a little higher than 7. But I’ve been keeping track (as best I can) of the genders of the authors I read back since I first heard that ‘women don’t write fantasy’. I always found that weird, because I usually end up reading female authors almost exclusively. 24 cis male authors in six months is way more than I was expecting and definitely higher than my average.

But as usual, women are dominating my reading. I’m shocked, I tell you. Shocked. /sarcasm>

Also, yes, there are more authors than there are books; several of the books I read were co-written by two authors together.

:edit: On a second count, the number of genderqueer authors appeared to be 10. Still not sure that’s the full correct number.

Books by Rating Jan-July 7th 2020

Looks like it’s been a pretty good six months! Almost half of my reads have been 5 star books, and most of the rest have been 4 stars. I can definitely live with that.

(For the record, one of the 3< was one I didn’t give any stars at all, because I just had no idea how to rate it. I enjoyed the book, but damn did it make me uncomfortable.)

Best Book/s You’ve Read So Far in 2020

Oh wow it is hard to narrow this down! The only thing that made it easier was that I’m still reading some of the contenders, and haven’t finished them yet.

The City We Became needs no introduction, surely, and everyone smarter than me read The Ninth Rain when it was first released, but Raybearer is a jawdropping masterpiece that’ll be released a little later this year. (I got lucky with an arc). You can read my review over here!

Best Sequel/s You’ve Read So Far in 2020

Tasha Suri’s Realm of Ash is a more than worthy successor to her incredible debut, Empire of Sand, and Rebel was a brilliant instalment in Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith’s Change series – even if Realm was much deeper and darker, Rebel was rich and exciting. I love the Change series so much, and I can’t wait for Suri’s next novel, Throne of Jasmine!

Queen’s Bargain was a relief and a surprise, after the trainwreck that was Twilight’s Dawn. I was so happy to get some worldbuilding, and for a character-focused story that was all about the family development and dynamic. It’s a really good book that made me remember how much I loved the Black Jewels series.

New Release You Haven’t Read Yet, But Want To

Why haven’t I gotten to these yet??? I have no excuses. BAD SIA.

Most Anticipated Release/s For the Second Half of the Year



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…Look, narrowing it down is hard, okay?

Biggest Disappointment/s

These were all books I was super hyped to read, but that ended up being let-downs. On paper, they all check the right boxes, but the execution didn’t work out, at least not for me. Sigh.

Biggest Surprise/s

I wasn’t expecting to seriously enjoy any of these, but I ended up loving all of them. Even though none of them are the sort of thing I normally read! Honestly, it probably means I should poke my toe out of my comfort zone a little more often…

New Favourite Author/s (Debuts or New To You)

Caruso made her debut a few years ago with a trilogy set in the same world as Obsidian Tower – a debut I bounced off. But I loved Tower! It’s one of my favourite reads of the year. As is The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, which was recommended by several people as just the thing to read during a pandemic.

And weirdly, it kind of is???

Underrated Gems You’ve Discovered Recently

Dragon’s Legacy is more of a re-discovery, since this read was a re-read, but I’m going to take the chance to hype the hell out of this book every chance I get! (MORE PEOPLE NEED TO READ IT, OKAY?)

The Chimes is a book I just finished recently, and absolutely have to review, because it’s just…wow. And The Wise and the Wicked is this quiet contemporary book about teen witches that is just stunning, but I’ve seen almost no one talk about it??? How dare???

Rereads This Year

Ohhhhhhhhhh, too many to count. This year (as every year) I’ve reread the Wayward Children series; the Rivers of London series; Green Creek; the Black Jewels series; Imperial Radch; The Dragon’s Legacy; Point of Hopes…The list goes on.

Like I said, I’ve had trouble concentrating. Rereading old faves – both for comfort and to prepare for new instalments in the series – has been easier than dealing with new stories for big chunks of the year.

Book/s That Made You Cry

I haven’t been brought to tears by any 2020 reads yet! Although as usual, Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series came pretty close…

Book/s That Made You Happy

I haven’t even finished Scapegracers or Dark Tide yet – I’m only letting myself read a page a day, to make them last. That’s how much I love them! I swear, both these books make me swoon.

And Empress of Timbra is just one of those books, the kind that make you feel fizzy-warm-happy even though there’s adventures and scary things and drama going on. I’m dying for more in this series!

Most Beautiful Book You’ve Bought So Far This Year



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This year I spoiled myself with this beautiful leatherbound copy of the Black Jewels trilogy omnibus, by ArtofPraise on Etsy. (And I bought a second copy for my bestie’s birthday – which isn’t till next week, so ssh!) The Black Jewels were some of my formative fantasy books, and I love them dearly. The core trilogy, especially, has a very special nook in my heart.

What Books Do You Need to Read By The End of the Year?

I loved Young Elites, so Rose Society (the sequel) is a book I really need to get to. I did actually start it once before, but ended up distracted and putting it down – hopefully a second attempt will be more successful. Do Not Go Quietly is a book I backed on Kickstarter, and I’m not sure there could be a better time for it. And War Girls is another book I started, but got distracted from – and it deserves better than that. What I read was amazing, and I need to know how it ends before the sequel’s released…

And…voilà! How’s your reading year going?

The post 2020 Mid Year Freak Out Book Tag appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Flightless, Take Flight: Throne of Swans by Katharine and Elizabeth Corr

A Throne of Swans by Katharine Corr, Elizabeth Corr
Representation: Secondary Bi/Pan character, Normalised queerness
Genres: Fantasy
Buy on Amazon, The Book Depository
Goodreads

When her father dies just before her birthday, seventeen-year-old Aderyn inherits the role of Protector of Atratys, a dominion in a kingdom where nobles are able to transform at will into the bird that represents their family bloodline. Aderyn's ancestral bird is a swan. But she has not transformed for years, not since witnessing the death of her mother - ripped apart by hawks that have supposedly been extinct since the long-ago War of the Raptors. 

With the benevolent shelter of her mother and her father now lost, Aderyn is at the mercy of her brutal uncle, the King, and his royal court. Driven by revenge and love, she must venture into the malevolent heart of the Citadel in order to seek the truth about the attack that so nearly destroyed her, to fight for the only home she has ever known and for the land she has vowed to protect.

Written in rich detail and evocative language, this is the start of an irresistible, soaring duology about courage, broken loyalties and fighting for your place in the world.

I’m honestly not sure what made me pick this up – I’m a lot more wary of YA than I used to be, and the blurb made Throne of Swans sound very predictable. I guessed this was going to be some kind of Swan Princess retelling. The cover is fairly dull (for my tastes). All things that should have made me pass this book by.

But the blurb also mentioned ‘rich detail and evocative language’, for which I’m an absolute sucker. So it may have been that.

Whatever the reason, I’m so glad I started reading it, because I really loved this book!

Even though it ticks quite a few boxes of my nope-list – first-person present-tense narration, which I normally despise. A romance that doesn’t seem to be based on anything but looks; the emotional aspect kind of comes out of nowhere. And I knocked a whole star off my rating for a completely unnecessary, lazy ‘twist’ that was meant to be an oh-so-shocking reveal about the villains.

I don’t like including spoilers in reviews, so I won’t spell it out for you, but seriously. That ‘twist’ makes me so damn angry.

Deep breath.

But if you can let those things go – and it’s surprisingly easy to do, to be fair – this is a book with surprisingly well thought out worldbuilding, and seriously gorgeous prose.

Throne of Swans is set in a kingdom – actually, a world, which is one of the things that made me perk up and pay attention – where humanity is split in two; the Flightless, who are what we’d think of as normal humans, and the Flighted, who can transform into birds, and who also rule as the noble class. Their bird-forms are not random; they seem to be genetic, since the same forms run in families, and their human forms bear signs of the birds they turn into – those who turn into owls have pointed ears, swans are pale with silvery-blond hair, peacocks have greenish skin and blue hair. ! That’s just so cool. It’s also apparent that the bird-forms of the local Flighted match up with their land’s native birds; although a Flighted’s bird-form is much bigger than the normal version of the same bird (which, frankly, makes the swans terrifying, since a normal one is capable of breaking human bones!) nobody turns into exotic birds. Solanum, the setting of Throne of Swans, is reminiscent of western Europe, and so we have Flighted who transform into swans (the royal family), ravens, pigeons, magpies – birds that belong in that environment. But we get a glimpse of foreign ambassadors who turn into peacocks and ibis, implying the existence of other lands based on India/Sri Lanka (where peacocks are native birds) and…well, Wikipedia tells me there are a lot of ibis species, ranging from various parts of Africa all the way to Japan, and since I have no idea which ibis the Corrs had in mind, it’s impossible to say what kind of kingdom that particular ambassador comes from.

But isn’t it incredible that so much thought went into the worldbuilding? I love it! And it serves to tell the reader that this phenomenon – the existence of Flighted – goes beyond Solanum. This is a worldwide thing. There are so many books where the authors don’t think about anything beyond the borders of their immediate setting, so it’s great to see that a lot more thought went into Throne of Swans.

I mean, we even get details like bits of the Flighted religion, quotes from their holy texts (the Litanies), and aphorisms and folktales from both the Flighted and Flightless. This is a really well thought out world, folx. I approve.

Another thing that took me by surprise was that Solanum has normalised queerness. Although Protectors (who rule the territories that make up the kingdoms) and monarchs must have a marriage that can produce children, same-sex relationships are no big deal. In total fairness, this wasn’t handled in the best way – the reader is told this via character dialogue, rather than shown it. We don’t get to see any queer relationships on the page, although one of the major secondary characters turns out to be bisexual (or possibly pansexual, it’s not clear). However…this is the same character, the only character, who is physically disabled and has been cast out of the line of succession because of it. (He’s Flighted, but he lost an arm, making him functionally Flightless).

It makes me really uncomfortable that the only queer character in our cast is also this tragic figure who’s been hurt so badly. Like…his queerness has nothing to do with his injury, or his becoming politically and socially ‘irrelevant’, as he’s described by several other noble characters. (Most of whom are dickheads, but still.) Oh, and he has a tragic unrequited love in his backstory. Like – bundled all together? It’s not a good look. This particular character being Flightless is plot-relevant (although I think it’s going to be even more important in the sequel, if I can predict where this duology is going) but you could have chosen literally anyone else to be The Queer.

Hells, why not make Aderyn, the main character, bisexual? You could still have her fall for a guy, as she does in the book. There’s no reason you couldn’t have done that.

Sigh.

And yet despite all of this, I really did enjoy Throne of Swans. The writing is beautiful, and it reads so easily – at a time when I had real trouble concentrating on any other book, ToS was something I could just…relax into. It pulled me in – I finished the whole thing in under 24 hours.

(Although spread out over more than a few days, I’ll admit. But when I sat down and really paid attention, I lost all ability to put the book down!)

There are some predictable tropes, I won’t lie. But there are also some interesting twists. The secondary characters are well-written, there’s an important thread of social justice woven throughout the story, and although I didn’t really feel Aderyn’s need for revenge, I found her other actions and motivations very believable – including the way she gets in over her head and doesn’t know how to handle a personable but despicable man who slowly starts to manipulate her. She’s been isolated her whole life, and been given very little cause to believe in herself, so I find it very understandable that she doesn’t see the red flags that I did. Who would have taught her how to spot a predator?

But that doesn’t mean she lets him get away with it. Aderyn is a Protector, and she genuinely cares about her land and her people. One of my favourite aspects of her character was seeing how badly she did not want Atratys – her dominion – to become like some of the others she’s seen, where the Flighted are viciously oppressed and locked into poverty. And although she never gets a chance to use the sword her status as a Protector allows her to wear even at the palace – a sword the reader is assured she knows how to use – we do get to see her fight, both with her mind and, when it becomes inescapably necessary, physically.

In conclusion, I really appreciate the worldbuilding and the prose. The plot itself is maybe a bit predictable, but not annoyingly so. The romance might kind of grow out of nothing, but since it doesn’t dominate the book I didn’t mind. And although it has some issues with its queer rep, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the read, because I really did – and I’ll definitely be buying the sequel when it’s released.

So if you’re looking for an easy but beautiful read, and can suspend your disbelief to let your mind gloss over its issues, I’d definitely recommend checking this one out.

(And don’t panic when you find that the actual swan princess is named Odette. This really isn’t a Swan Princess retelling. I promise!)

The post Flightless, Take Flight: Throne of Swans by Katharine and Elizabeth Corr appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Be the Cog That Breaks the Machine: The First Sister by Linden A. Lewis

The First Sister by Linden A. Lewis
Representation: F/F, F/NB, Nonbinary Secondary Character, characters of colour
on 4th August 2020
Buy on Amazon, The Book Depository
Goodreads

Combining the social commentary of The Handmaid’s Tale with the white-knuckled thrills of Red Rising, this epic space opera follows a comfort woman as she claims her agency, a soldier questioning his allegiances, and a non-binary hero out to save the solar system.

First Sister has no name and no voice. As a priestess of the Sisterhood, she travels the stars alongside the soldiers of Earth and Mars—the same ones who own the rights to her body and soul. When her former captain abandons her, First Sister’s hopes for freedom are dashed when she is forced to stay on her ship with no friends, no power, and a new captain—Saito Ren—whom she knows nothing about. She is commanded to spy on Captain Ren by the Sisterhood, but soon discovers that working for the war effort is so much harder to do when you’re falling in love.

Lito val Lucius climbed his way out of the slums to become an elite soldier of Venus, but was defeated in combat by none other than Saito Ren, resulting in the disappearance of his partner, Hiro. When Lito learns that Hiro is both alive and now a traitor to the cause, he now has a shot at redemption: track down and kill his former partner. But when he discovers recordings that Hiro secretly made, Lito’s own allegiances are put to the test. Ultimately, he must decide between following orders and following his heart.

A stunning and sweeping debut novel that explores the power of technology, colonization, race, and gender, The First Sister is perfect for fans of James S.A. Corey, Chuck Wendig, and Margaret Atwood.

If you’re looking for a book where there’s a clear Dark Side and no question who the heroes are, this is not the book for you. If you want an adventure, a heist, capers and shenanigans, this is not the book for you. If you’re looking for a comfort read, a quick read, a fun read, then this is not the book for you.

But if, instead, what you want is a book that will challenge you, captivate you, and make you think, then – here. This is it. This is what you’ve been waiting for.

I’m not going to lie, the world of The First Sister is pretty damn bleak. Humanity is torn in two and at war with itself; there’s the Gaens, with their repulsive religion that makes voiceless, nameless sex-slaves of its priestesses, and the Icarri, whose technology is wondrous but comes at a horrifying cost. We also have the Asters, an off-shoot of humanity who altered themselves to better adapt to the harsh environment of planetary surfaces. The dynamics between the three are far more complicated than they seem at first, something which gradually unfolds over the course of the book.

But it’s also a very diverse universe. Queerness of all kinds is completely normalised, the primary languages of the galaxy are English, Spanish and Chinese, and although the First Sister herself is white, Lito is the descendant of Spanish and Italian spacefarers, and Hiro and Saito Ren are of Japanese ancestry. This, too, is all normalised. Space is not white-washed here!

So what is The First Sister actually about? Well, you’ve got the blurb up above, so I’m not going to reiterate that. What I’ll say instead is that it’s about little people – people who feel small, who think they’re powerless, who are trapped in societies designed to control them – discovering that even the smallest game piece can overturn the board. It’s about being a tiny cog in an enormous machine – and how even the tiniest cog, if it refuses to turn, can bring the whole thing down.

And that makes it very much a book for our times, honestly. That makes it very much a book for all of us who feel overwhelmed and hopeless about the state of the world, because Lewis has crafted a story where imperfect people – cogs in their respective machines – can still dream about peace in the midst of a never-ending war. Can still reach for hope and better things even while crushed in the jaws of their unforgiving cultures. Where even those who are not fighters can fight – through their fear, through the weight of expectation and command and history.

The First Sister is a book about agency and compassion, about voices among the voiceless, about doing the right thing even when there is no right thing – about making the right thing, when there is none. It’s about looking your society right in the eye and saying no.

No more.

This stops here.

This is a powerful, gut-punching read that hooks you and doesn’t let you go. It’s not grimdark, but it’s not a plasma-beams-firing action story either. There is love, but this is not a romance. It’s a story with deft worldbuilding, subverted tropes, and characters so real and human you can hear them breathe. It’s social commentary and a call to arms; an instruction manual for resisting oppression and corrupted systems; a prayer that this is not our future.

It’s a book you need to read.

The post Be the Cog That Breaks the Machine: The First Sister by Linden A. Lewis appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Take My Breath Away: Analysing (Some of the) Beautiful Covers We’ve Been Blessed With Lately!

We have had some ridiculously gorgeous cover reveals in the last little while – so pretty I just had to showcase them! It doesn’t hurt that these are all from my most-anticipated list, as well!

Cover artist: Christophe Young



A Dark and Hollow Star (A Dark and Hollow Star, #1) by Ashley Shuttleworth
on 2nd March 2021
Buy on Amazon, The Book Depository
Goodreads

The Cruel Prince meets City of Bones in this thrilling urban fantasy set in the magical underworld of Toronto that follows a queer cast of characters racing to stop a serial killer whose crimes could expose the hidden world of faeries to humans.

Choose your player.

The “ironborn” half-fae outcast of her royal fae family.

A tempestuous Fury, exiled to earth from the Immortal Realm and hellbent on revenge.

A dutiful fae prince, determined to earn his place on the throne.

The prince’s brooding guardian, burdened with a terrible secret.

For centuries, the Eight Courts of Folk have lived among us, concealed by magic and bound by law to do no harm to humans. This arrangement has long kept peace in the Courts—until a series of gruesome and ritualistic murders rocks the city of Toronto and threatens to expose faeries to the human world.

Four queer teens, each who hold a key piece of the truth behind these murders, must form a tenuous alliance in their effort to track down the mysterious killer behind these crimes. If they fail, they risk the destruction of the faerie and human worlds alike. If that’s not bad enough, there’s a war brewing between the Mortal and Immortal Realms, and one of these teens is destined to tip the scales. The only question is: which way?

Wish them luck. They’re going to need it.

Once I picked my jaw up off the floor, I realised that A Dark and Hollow Star‘s cover reminded me of that stunningly iconic moment from the last season of the Game of Thrones!

I mean…look, I wasn’t a fan of the show, but the clip of that moment went viral online – which I’m glad of, because it’s beautiful.

But the positioning of the wings in the book cover – as well as the angle of the girl’s body – makes me think that A Dark and Hollow Star trumps GoT by having those actually be her wings! (Which is obviously a vast improvement of a badass woman only appearing to have fabulous dragon wings. Wings > the illusion of wings, always!)

There’s been an improvement, the last few years, in fantasy girls not having to be in quite such painful poses – in the name of looking sexy – as they used to. The girl’s pose might be slightly provocative, if you’re feeling puritanical, but it’s a pose that wouldn’t hurt to hold, and there’s no cleavage or anything! In fact I think the cut of her shirt-thing is actually a necessity, to give her wings full mobility. I don’t think anyone could argue that she’s being sexualised; she’s got her sword, is in the act of drawing it, and is staring right at the viewer like she’s ready to gut them. I love it!!!

Cover artist: Sam Schechter



In Deeper Waters by F.T. Lukens
on 20th April 2021
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A young prince must rely on a mysterious stranger to save him when he is kidnapped during his coming-of-age tour in this swoony adventure that is The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue meets Pirates of the Caribbean.

Prince Tal has long awaited his coming-of-age tour. After spending most of his life cloistered behind palace walls as he learns to keep his forbidden magic secret, he can finally see his family’s kingdom for the first time. His first taste of adventure comes just two days into the journey, when their crew discovers a mysterious prisoner on a burning derelict vessel.

Tasked with watching over the prisoner, Tal is surprised to feel an intense connection with the roguish Athlen. So when Athlen leaps overboard and disappears, Tal feels responsible and heartbroken, knowing Athlen could not have survived in the open ocean.

That is, until Tal runs into Athlen days later on dry land, very much alive, and as charming—and secretive—as ever. But before they can pursue anything further, Tal is kidnapped by pirates and held ransom in a plot to reveal his rumored powers and instigate a war. Tal must escape if he hopes to save his family and the kingdom. And Athlen might just be his only hope…

This one is much brighter, suggesting a much lighter tone than A Dark and Hollow Star. It’s all pinks and purples and golds, and check out those smiles! Those two look like such adorable dorks, and they look like such adorable dorks for each other. I’m guessing the romance is a central aspect of the book – or at least, the marketing department wants us to think it is. But even if I wasn’t excited by the thought of a cute, light-hearted shipboard romance (and I am!) the fact that this is an interracial couple has me hopeful there’s some meat under the spun-sugar. It’s still way too common for fantasy authors to default to white-and-handwavey-Medieval, and it looks like Lukens hasn’t done that. I’m excited to see her worldbuilding, and kudos to the publisher for being willing to put brown skin on a book cover (more common these days, but still noteworthy. Remember all the whitewashed covers of the 2000s?)

Without the blurb, it might be easy to mistake this for historical fiction, or alt-history, rather than fantasy – there’s nothing obviously magical in the illustration. But I think most of the readers who will pick this up because rapiers and cravats and pretty boys smiling dopily at each other will be happy whether it’s purely pirate!fic or fantasy. Or both!

Some books just give you that glittery happy feeling as you read them, and this brightly-coloured cover seems to promise to be that kind of story. I guess we’ll see!

Cover artist: Tara Phillips



Sweet & Bitter Magic by Adrienne Tooley
on 9th March 2021
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In this charming debut fantasy perfect for fans of Sorcery of Thorns and Girls of Paper and Fire, a witch cursed to never love meets a girl hiding her own dangerous magic, and the two strike a dangerous bargain to save their queendom.

Tamsin is the most powerful witch of her generation. But after committing the worst magical sin, she’s exiled by the ruling Coven and cursed with the inability to love. The only way she can get those feelings back—even for just a little while—is to steal love from others.

Wren is a source—a rare kind of person who is made of magic, despite being unable to use it herself. Sources are required to train with the Coven as soon as they discover their abilities, but Wren—the only caretaker to her ailing father—has spent her life hiding her secret.

When a magical plague ravages the queendom, Wren’s father falls victim. To save him, Wren proposes a bargain: if Tamsin will help her catch the dark witch responsible for creating the plague, then Wren will give Tamsin her love for her father.

Of course, love bargains are a tricky thing, and these two have a long, perilous journey ahead of them—that is, if they don't kill each other first..

Look, I don’t know nearly enough about art to use any technical terms, but I freaking love this style – soft edges, but realistic, but still an illustration? *happy sigh*

The lighting here makes me think the writing style in this one is going to be really beautiful – I can’t put into words why it makes me think that, though.

What’s kind of interesting is that it’s not immediately apparent that Sweet & Bitter Magic is a fantasy book – although to be fair, with that title, it maybe doesn’t need to be. It could be historical fiction, maybe. But there’s that beautiful smoke that echoes the ribbons around the two girls’ necks, which is probably intended to be a visual representation of magic. And, like I said, there’s the title. Not every book with ‘magic’ in the title is a fantasy, but I think title + smoke makes it clear enough.

Now for the girls. Their pose could be that of friends or sisters, and I have to admit that’s a little disappointing – will a queer teen in a bookshop know, from this cover, that this is a queer story? I don’t know. I think the clasped hands have something very soft and intimate about them, but I’m not sure I’d look at this and think ‘sapphic’ if I didn’t already know A Sweet & Bitter Magic is f/f. I don’t think it’s an accident that the girls are wearing matching ribbons around their necks, but… It’s fairly subtle.

Is that a bad thing? Teens who are forbidden from reading ‘those books’ can carry this cover around openly. That’s a very good thing. If you’re looking for queerness, you’re probably going to notice those hands, and get your hopes up. Is that enough? Does it need to be more obvious?

And personally I think it’s a good thing for cis-het people to pick up books they don’t know are queer, and get ‘exposed’ to the idea of it when they might not otherwise. I mean, some bigots will put such a book straight down, but some won’t, especially if it’s a good book. You can win a lot of hearts over that way.

Besides, the cover of A Dark and Hollow Star gives no hint as to the queer content whatsoever (but that maybe suggests romance isn’t a big part of the plot, as it probably is in these other two books?) and I think In Deeper Waters‘ cover has…plausible deniability. Like, it’s not queer-baiting, but if you don’t really look at it…I could have sneaked In Deeper Waters past my dad when I was a teenager, is all I’m saying.

So the cover of Sweet and Bitter Magic is quietly there for people looking for queer stories, and draws in those who aren’t by being so damn beautiful. That’s pretty win/win, surely?

And whether it’s overtly queer or not, I do love the pose of these two girls back to back, them against the world, kind of quietly defiant. That colour palette, and the softened edges…I really can’t wait to pick this one up!

Regardless, these are all freaking GORGEOUS covers, and I hope the trend of illustration-style covers for fantasy books doesn’t go away any time soon!

The post Take My Breath Away: Analysing (Some of the) Beautiful Covers We’ve Been Blessed With Lately! appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Your Gender Binary Is Imaginary; Genderqueer Characters in Fantasy (+ Bonus SciFi)

Genderqueer Pride dragon by Kaenith!

More and more, we’re having an easier time finding cis queer characters in Fantasy – not an easy time; there’s still not enough of them, and publishers often don’t advertise the fact that a book is queer. But there’s more than there used to be, and the number’s steadily increasing.

It’s much harder to find queer characters who aren’t cis – whether that means trans, genderfluid, agender, or any other nonbinary identity. Especially if you want to read books where they’re PoV characters, not minor characters who don’t get much page-time.

Hence this list.

What these characters have in common is that they are not cis – their gender identity doesn’t line up exactly with the sex they were assigned at birth. Some are recognisably transgender, even though that does not mean the same thing to all of them; some are much more fluid; some, whether human or not, don’t define themselves by human genders at all. I’m not going to assign them labels unless they’ve claimed those identities for themselves on-page.

I created a Goodreads list for genderqueer leads in fantasy and sci-fi here, by the way, so please feel free to add your own recommendations to it – or leave them in the comments, since I’m always on the lookout for more to read!

This list in particular is nowhere near exhaustive, and I hope to do follow-ups in the future to feature more genderqueer leads in spec-fic!

Starless by Jacqueline Carey
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Jacqueline Carey is back with an amazing adventure not seen since her New York Times bestselling Kushiel's Legacy series. Lush and sensual, Starless introduces us to an epic world where exiled gods live among us, and a hero whose journey will resonate long after the last page is turned.



Let your mind be like the eye of the hawk…

Destined from birth to serve as protector of the princess Zariya, Khai is trained in the arts of killing and stealth by a warrior sect in the deep desert; yet there is one profound truth that has been withheld from him.

In the court of the Sun-Blessed, Khai must learn to navigate deadly intrigue and his own conflicted identity…but in the far reaches of the western seas, the dark god Miasmus is rising, intent on nothing less than wholesale destruction.

If Khai is to keep his soul’s twin Zariya alive, their only hope lies with an unlikely crew of prophecy-seekers on a journey that will take them farther beneath the starless skies than anyone can imagine.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Starless is a standalone epic fantasy, which is honestly not something I thought could exist – or at least, not something that could exist and be done well. As usual, though, Carey exceeds all expectations.

The protagonist and first-person narrator Khai is raised and trained by warrior-monks so that he can eventually meet and protect the princess he was bound to at birth. Although the realisation that he is genderqueer, and his subsequent explorations of his gender identity, are not the driving plot – Khai and his princess do, after all, have to save the world – that part of the story made me especially happy, and as a genderqueer person myself I thought it was depicted very well and respectfully. I mean, it’s Jacqueline Carey, so I knew it was going to be elegantly done, but I’m still grateful that the narrative treated it as merely an aspect of Khai’s character instead something to be sensationalised. Several of the book’s minor characters are pretty tactless and inappropriately nosy in a few scenes, but it’s very clear to the reader that this is, at best, vulgar and tasteless, and it’s a very brief and minor part of the book.

Wake of Vultures (The Shadow, #1) by Lila Bowen
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A rich, dark fantasy of destiny, death and the supernatural world hiding beneath the surface.

Nettie Lonesome lives in a land of hard people and hard ground dusted with sand. She's a half-breed who dresses like a boy, raised by folks who don't call her a slave but use her like one. She knows of nothing else. That is, until the day a stranger attacks her. When nothing, not even a sickle to the eye can stop him, Nettie stabs him through the heart with a chunk of wood and he turns to black sand.

And just like that, Nettie can see.

But her newfound sight is a blessing and a curse. Even if she doesn't understand what's under her own skin, she can sense what everyone else is hiding—at least physically. The world is full of evil, and now she knows the source of all the sand in the desert. Haunted by the spirits, Nettie has no choice but to set out on a quest that might lead her to find her true kin . . . if the monsters along the way don't kill her first.

Lila Bowen’s Shadow series opens with Nettie, a young biracial Native American/Black woman working as a slave for people who are definitely not her parents. Over the course of the first book she shucks any hint of femininity and lives as a man – taking the name Rhett – despite still using female pronouns for herself in her own mind. However, early in book two Nettie becomes Rhett in mind as well as presentation and uses male pronouns from then on out. More plot-relevant is the fact that Rhett is the Shadow, a personage whose duty it is to put down monsters – and in this Wild West setting, there’s plenty of those, from vampires to shapeshifters to harpies, although not all are evil and several actively help Rhett with his tasks. I love Rhett a lot as a character – he’s prickly and snarky and isn’t interested in being some kind of Chosen One one bit, thank you – and his internalised misogyny is realistic even while it’s pretty sad (I’m hoping/assuming he’ll work out that women don’t actually suck fairly soon). This is a series that was recommended to me multiple times over the years, and I always bounced off the Wild West setting, but I’m glad I finally powered through the first few pages of book one, because once I did I was completely hooked. Strongly recommended!

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
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IN SPACE EVERYONE CAN HEAR YOU SING

A century ago, the Sentience Wars tore the galaxy apart and nearly ended the entire concept of intelligent space-faring life. In the aftermath, a curious tradition was invented-something to cheer up everyone who was left and bring the shattered worlds together in the spirit of peace, unity, and understanding.

Once every cycle, the civilizations gather for the Metagalactic Grand Prix - part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past. Instead of competing in orbital combat, the powerful species that survived face off in a competition of song, dance, or whatever can be physically performed in an intergalactic talent show. The stakes are high for this new game, and everyone is forced to compete.

This year, though, humankind has discovered the enormous universe. And while they expected to discover a grand drama of diplomacy, gunships, wormholes, and stoic councils of aliens, they have instead found glitter, lipstick and electric guitars. Mankind will not get to fight for its destiny - they must sing.

A one-hit-wonder band of human musicians, dancers and roadies from London - Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes - have been chosen to represent Earth on the greatest stage in the galaxy. And the fate of their species lies in their ability to rock.

I’m not entirely sure where you’ve been if you missed the glitterbomb that was Space Opera‘s release (and Hugo nomination!) but if you haven’t read it yet, you are in for SUCH a treat! It’s been pretty accurately described as Eurovision in space, with the future of the human race as the stakes. It’s wild and wonderful and the lead character identifies as a gendersplat, and honestly, you simply have not lived if you haven’t read this yet. Go grab a copy already!

Sea Change by S.M. Wheeler
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The unhappy child of two powerful parents who despise each other, young Lilly turns to the ocean to find solace, which she finds in the form of the eloquent and intelligent sea monster Octavius, a kraken. In Octavius’s many arms, Lilly learns of friendship, loyalty, and family. When Octavius, forbidden by Lilly to harm humans, is captured by seafaring traders and sold to a circus, Lilly becomes his only hope for salvation. Desperate to find him, she strikes a bargain with a witch that carries a shocking price.

Her journey to win Octavius’s freedom is difficult. The circus master wants a Coat of Illusions; the Coat tailor wants her undead husband back from a witch; the witch wants her skin back from two bandits; the bandits just want some company, but they might kill her first. Lilly's quest tests her resolve, tries her patience, and leaves her transformed in every way.

Sea Change is one of my all-time favourite books and incredibly dear to me. It’s darkly weird with a magical, fairytale-esque feel to it, despite the brushes with horror – so, an old-style fairy tale, basically. It’s about a young woman who’s best friend is a kraken (yes, you heard me) who must go on a quest of sorts to rescue him when he’s kidnapped and sold. What results is actually a bunch of interlocking quests; this person wants x, which can only be gotten from that person, who wants y, and y must be earned with some other magical object that requires heroic (or not so heroic) tasks to be won. It sounds messy, but everything’s perfectly on point and it never feels formulaic or predictable (anything but!) I desperately shove this book at everyone I can, okay, because the writing is just beautiful and it is a crime that it’s not more well-known.

It earns a spot on this list because the main character becomes physically agender as a result of one of her magical bargains; she continues to self-identify as a young woman, but presents as a man, since that makes her life so much easier. There’s some great, incisive commentary on gender roles and beauty standards, but fear not; it never takes away from the rescue the kraken!!! storyline.

Thief of Songs by M.C.A. Hogarth
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The lowland conquerers have taken everything from him, or so the composer Amet Emendexte-ilye was taught: prestige, autonomy, wealth, and most importantly, magic. But when one of them steals his fiancee, Amet avenges himself on them all by writing music and giving it away in defiance of the lowland laws. It is a very satisfactory vengeance, or so he thinks, until he discovers the kingdom's royal composer is planning to debut Amet's work—as folk music!

So he's riding east to set the record straight. But he has no idea how compelling a decadent lowland hermaphrodite can be. And before it's over, this thief of songs may be stealing more than his music....

A lyrical romance, set in a second world fantasy. Leave the world behind today!

Heat Level: ** (not-explicit, some sensual thoughts) Relationship: Hermaphrodite/male with poly asexual neuter third Length: Novel

The Twin Kingdoms series is joyful escapism fantasy, the kind of books that just make you so damned HAPPY. Set in a kingdom with four genders – cis male, cis female, hermaphrodite, and agender – the first book is a polyamorous fantasy romance centred around music and magic; the hermaphrodite royal composer, already in a relationship with an agender individual, falls for a cis guy. The second book builds on the triad from book one, focusing on the relationship between the agender, asexual member of the triad and the pansexual cisman – with bonus sea serpents! There is absolutely nothing I do not adore about this series, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed for more books – alas, so far the series hasn’t sold so well, so the author has had to focus on other projects. SO GO BUY THE BOOKS SO WE CAN HAVE MORE ALREADY! Seriously, you won’t regret it!

Static by L.A. Witt
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After two years together, Alex has been dreading the inevitable moment when Damon learns the truth: that Alex is a shifter, part of a small percentage of the population able to switch genders at will. Thanks to a forced implant, though, Alex is suddenly static—unable to shift—and male. Overnight, he’s out to a world that neither understands nor tolerates shifters . . . and to his heterosexual boyfriend.

Damon is stunned to discover his girlfriend is a shifter, and scared to death of the dangers the implant poses to Alex’s health. He refuses to abandon Alex, but what about their relationship? Damon is straight, and with the implant both costly and dangerous to remove, Alex is stuck as a man.

Stripped of half his identity and facing serious physical and social ramifications, Alex needs Damon more than ever, but he doesn’t see how they can get through this.

Especially if he’s static forever.

I read this one years ago, so I don’t know if I’d feel the same way about it now, but I remember really loving it. Set in a world identical to ours except for the fact that some people are shapeshifters who physically change between male and female at will, it’s about what happens when the lead – who believes himself to be straight – discovers that his girlfriend is one of these shapeshifters. Way worse is the fact that she is now stuck as he, due to the seriously fucked-up actions of their family. This one could definitely be triggering for some people, what with various degrees and flavours of queerphobia (including forced body modification) and body dysphoria, and I do wonder how it would read now – when it was first published I’d never heard of the term genderfluid and I don’t remember it being used in the text. But I don’t mind telling you that all ends well – I’m never going to knowingly recommend books with awful endings, especially ones dealing with these kinds of topics.

Every Day (Every Day, #1) by David Levithan
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Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.

It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone A wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day.

This one is a contemporary YA with one fantastical element; the main character A, who wakes up in a new body every day. A has no control over who they temporarily possess, and switches between all kinds of bodies. It’s a deft way of making some pointed comments about mental illness and disability – the passage where A mentions that they’ve ‘been’ people with bipolar disorder etc before, because such things are in the physical brain that A gets along with their new daily body… I don’t know, that hit me really hard. A has no gender of their own, and I’m not sure how they’d identify if someone could custom-make a perfect body to A’s specifications, but A definitely belongs on this list. The story itself is about A falling in love with a perfectly normal girl Rhiannon, and how exactly they can make that work. There’s finally a proper sequel (book two is book one retold from Rhiannon’s perspective), and I’m really excited to see where the story’s gone.

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
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Odd-mannered, obsessive, withdrawn, Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She's used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, as they accuse, she'd be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remained of her world, save for stories told around the cookfire.

Aster lives in the low-deck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, the Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship's leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster, who they consider to be less than human.

When the autopsy of Matilda's sovereign reveals a surprising link between his death and her mother's suicide some quarter-century before, Aster retraces her mother's footsteps. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer and sowing the seeds of civil war, Aster learns there may be a way off the ship if she's willing to fight for it.

This is one of the most powerful books I’ve ever read, but is probably best not read lightly; Aster is an autistic, intersex Black woman living on a generation-ship where the people of the lower levels of the ship – inevitably people of colour – are effectively slaves. The violence and cruelty is disturbing, but in fairness, it damn well should be. That said, it’s also an incredibly beautiful book. You can read my full review here, but in essence, Aster discovers a possible link between her dead mother and the now-dying captain of the ship, which leads her to some deep, dark secrets that could change everything for everyone. That’s really only skimming the very surface of what Unkindness is about – it’s a rich, complex book with many interlocking stories, about rebellion and oppression and social justice, racism and sexism, sexuality and community and violence, featuring a cast with a range of gender identities, sexualities, and places in the ship’s hierarchy. But it’s not a lecturing, moralistic book; it’s a fierce book that comes alight in your hands, all starfire and blood and howling. It’s like nothing else I’ve ever read.

“I am a boy and a girl and a witch all wrapped into one very strange, flimsy, indecisive body. Do you think my body couldn’t decide what it wanted to be?”

An Unkindness of Ghosts

There’s no way a quick description of this one can do it any justice, so I urge you to check out the Goodreads page and see what people have said about it. I do genuinely think it’s one of the best books ever written, and it single-handedly propelled Rivers Solomon onto my auto-buy list of authors.

River of Teeth (River of Teeth, #1) by Sarah Gailey
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In the early 20th Century, the United States government concocted a plan to import hippopotamuses into the marshlands of Louisiana to be bred and slaughtered as an alternative meat source. This is true.

Other true things about hippos: they are savage, they are fast, and their jaws can snap a man in two.

This was a terrible plan.

Contained within this volume is an 1890s America that might have been: a bayou overrun by feral hippos and mercenary hippo wranglers from around the globe. It is the story of Winslow Houndstooth and his crew. It is the story of their fortunes. It is the story of his revenge.

This series of novellas (collected in an omnibus as American Hippo) is set in an alternate USA where Congress decided it would be a good idea to import hippos for farming – something they apparently actually considered at one point?! Anyway, it’s a brilliant, exciting story of a very mixed gang – including a nonbinary expert in demolitions and poisons who uses they/them pronouns, and a gender-nonconforming, overweight con-artist who gets her way by seducing anyone she pleases, fuck you big women are gorgeous too – all riding hippos instead of horses as they go try to earn a pile of gold by clearing all the (very dangerous!) wild hippos out of a place the government doesn’t want them in anymore. Strongly recommended!

The Black Tides of Heaven (Tensorate, #1) by J.Y. Yang
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The Black Tides of Heaven is one of a pair of standalone introductions to JY Yang's Tensorate Series. For more of the story you can read its twin novella The Red Threads of Fortune

Mokoya and Akeha, the twin children of the Protector, were sold to the Grand Monastery as children. While Mokoya developed her strange prophetic gift, Akeha was always the one who could see the strings that moved adults to action. While his sister received visions of what would be, Akeha realized what could be. What's more, he saw the sickness at the heart of his mother's Protectorate.

A rebellion is growing. The Machinists discover new levers to move the world every day, while the Tensors fight to put them down and preserve the power of the state. Unwilling to continue to play a pawn in his mother's twisted schemes, Akeha leaves the Tensorate behind and falls in with the rebels. But every step Akeha takes towards the Machinists is a step away from his sister Mokoya. Can Akeha find peace without shattering the bond he shares with his twin sister?

In the Tensorate series, all minors are genderless until they become old enough to choose a gender for themselves – at which point magic is used to shape/alter their bodies as appropriate. Sadly, this does not equate to a perfect utopia: there’s a tyrant on the throne, one who definitely needs removing. Add a rebel group trying to promote an Industrial Revolution to counter the tyrant’s stranglehold on magic, prophets, and dragons? And you have a pretty much perfect series!

Besides the picking-a-gender-at-adulthood thing, we also meet several characters who decline to choose a binary gender, or who chose not to go through the magical body-sculpting process to match their body to their gender.

The 5th Gender: A Tinkered Stars Mystery by G.L. Carriger
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A species that has no word for murder, has a murderer aboard their spaceship.

ALIEN

Tristol lives in exile. But he’s built a life for himself aboard a human space station. He’s even begun to understand the complex nuances of human courting rituals.

Detective Hastion is finally flirting back!

MURDER

Except that Tristol’s beloved space station is unexpectedly contacted by the galoi – a xenophobic species with five genders, purple skin, and serious attitude. They need the help of a human detective because there’s a murderer aboard their spaceship. Murder is so rare, the galoi don’t even have a word for it.

Tristol knows this because he is galoi.

ROMANCE

Which means that he and Detective Hastion are on the case… together.

Delicate Sensibilities?

Contains men who love other men in graphic detail, regardless of gender, biology, or skin color... and lots of emotively sexy tentacle hair.

New York Times best selling author Gail Carriger (writing as G.L. Carriger) brings you a light-hearted romantic cozy mystery featuring an adorable lavender alien and his human crush.

This one is a fun little romp – is there a scifi equivalent of paranormal romance? Because this is kind of that, but with aliens! I wrote up a full review of it here, but in short: it’s a murder mystery involving an alien race that doesn’t even have a word for murder – but does have five genders. One of these gender identities is particularly important to the book, and really brilliantly explored through one of the main characters, Tris. Despite touching on some serious topics, it’s fun and a bit silly (in a good way) with very enthusiastic sex scenes!

The Mirror Empire (Worldbreaker Saga, #1) by Kameron Hurley
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On the eve of a recurring catastrophic event known to extinguish nations and reshape continents, a troubled orphan evades death and slavery to uncover her own bloody past... while a world goes to war with itself.

In the frozen kingdom of Saiduan, invaders from another realm are decimating whole cities, leaving behind nothing but ash and ruin. At the heart of this war lie the pacifistic Dhai people, once enslaved by the Saiduan and now courted by their former masters to provide aid against the encroaching enemy.

Stretching from desolate tundra to steamy, semi-tropical climes seething with sentient plant life, this is an epic tale of blood mages and mercenaries, emperors and priestly assassins who must unite to save a world on the brink of ruin.

As the dark star of the cataclysm rises, an illegitimate ruler is tasked with holding together a country fractured by civil war; a precocious young fighter is asked to betray his family to save his skin; and a half-Dhai general must choose between the eradication of her father's people or loyalty to her alien Empress.  

Through tense alliances and devastating betrayal, the Dhai and their allies attempt to hold against a seemingly unstoppable force as enemy nations prepare for a coming together of worlds as old as the universe itself.

In the end, one world will rise - and many will perish.

The Worldbreaker trilogy is amazing features multiple cultures that feature more than just two genders, with a variety of pronouns used. However, this is just a normalised part of the setting: the actual plot follows the rising of a deadly star and the death of worlds – some of which aren’t going down without a fight. Brace yourself for star-magic, semi-sentient plant-life, and a war where the winners will be those who can kill their own alternate selves the fastest.

Out of Salem by Hal Schrieve
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Goodreads

When genderqueer fourteen-year-old Z Chilworth wakes from death after a car crash that killed their parents and sisters, they have to adjust quickly to their new status as a zombie. Always a talented witch, Z can now barely perform magic and is rapidly decaying. Faced with rejection from their remaining family members and old friends, Z moves in with Mrs. Dunnigan, an elderly witch, and befriends Aysel, a loud would-be-goth classmate who is, like Z, a loner. As Z struggles to find a way to repair the broken magical seal holding their body together, Aysel fears that her classmates will discover her status as an unregistered werewolf. When a local psychiatrist is murdered in an apparent werewolf attack, the town of Salem, Oregon, becomes even more hostile to monsters, and Z and Aysel are driven together in an attempt to survive a place where most people wish that neither of them existed.

Out of Salem is a weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeird little book, and it’s definitely not all softness and light, but it’s still a really good read. Set in a world that looks a lot like ours, except you can buy unicorn blood at the healthfood store and being the seventh son of a seventh son packs a real punch, it starts when one of the main characters, Z (they/them pronouns) wakes up reanimated after a car crash. Necromancy is illegal, but since Z didn’t cast the spell in question, there’s not much the authorities can do. Z needs to find a way to make a new life for themself, even now that they’re undead. Luckily, there’s a cat lady and a lesbian werewolf who might be able to help with that.

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All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1) by Martha Wells
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In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.

But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid — a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.

But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.

The Murderbot series (novellas with one full novel in the series so far) follows the titular Murderbot, an AI whose body is mostly robotic with some fleshy bits. The series has gained a (well-earned) cult following, because who doesn’t empathise with a big scary robot who just wants to be left alone so they can watch their favourite soaps?

No Man of Woman Born by Ana Mardoll
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Destiny sees what others don't. A quiet fisher mourning the loss of xer sister to a cruel dragon. A clever hedge-witch gathering knowledge in a hostile land. A son seeking vengeance for his father's death. A daughter claiming the legacy denied her. A princess laboring under an unbreakable curse. A young resistance fighter questioning everything he's ever known. A little girl willing to battle a dragon for the sake of a wish. These heroes and heroines emerge from adversity into triumph, recognizing they can be more than they ever imagined: chosen ones of destiny. From the author of the Earthside series and the Rewoven Tales novels, No Man of Woman Born is a collection of seven fantasy stories in which transgender and nonbinary characters subvert and fulfill gendered prophecies. These prophecies recognize and acknowledge each character's gender, even when others do not. Note: No trans or nonbinary characters were killed in the making of this book. Trigger warnings and neopronoun pronunciation guides are provided for each story.

No Man of Woman Born is an anthology of short stories that play with the idea of gendered prophecy – inspired by the famous fall of the Witch-King in Lord of the Rings, wherein the villain who can be killed by no man is slain by Eowyn, a woman warrior wearing men’s armour. Here, the characters’ genders don’t match their biologies, but are recognised by prophecy/fate even if not always by the people around them. A seriously cool concept to play with!

The Empress of Salt and Fortune (The Singing Hills Cycle #1) by Nghi Vo
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With the heart of an Atwood tale and the visuals of a classic Asian period drama The Empress of Salt and Fortune is a tightly and lushly written narrative about empire, storytelling, and the anger of women.

A young royal from the far north is sent south for a political marriage. Alone and sometimes reviled, she has only her servants on her side. This evocative debut chronicles her rise to power through the eyes of her handmaiden, at once feminist high fantasy and a thrilling indictment of monarchy.

This novella follows an agender monk whose order is primarily concerned with gathering facts – and by that I mean, stories. They and their avian companion interview and record the story of one of the old empress’s waiting women, and it is such a beautiful book! Happily, we’re even getting a sequel later this year, which I can’t wait to read!

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi
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A thought-provoking and haunting novel about a creature that escapes from an artist's canvas, whose talent is sniffing out monsters in a world that claims they don't exist anymore. Perfect for fans of Akata Witch and Shadowshaper.



There are no monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. Jam and her best friend, Redemption, have grown up with this lesson all their life. But when Jam meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colors and claws, who emerges from one of her mother's paintings and a drop of Jam's blood, she must reconsider what she's been told. Pet has come to hunt a monster--and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption's house. Jam must fight not only to protect her best friend, but also uncover the truth, and the answer to the question How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?

In their riveting and timely young adult debut, acclaimed novelist Akwaeke Emezi asks difficult questions about what choices you can make when the society around you is in denial.

Pet‘s mc is a brown trans girl living in a post-modern utopia – or as close to utopia as mortals can get. But when she accidentally summons a Biblical-style angel out of one of her mother’s paintings, she’s forced to examine her society with new eyes. An absolute masterpiece.

Unnatural Magic by C.M. Waggoner
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Goodreads

A “brilliant and terrifically fun”* debut novel brings an enchanting new voice to fantasy.

Onna can write the parameters of a spell faster than any of the young men in her village school. But despite her incredible abilities, she’s denied a place at the nation’s premier arcane academy. Undaunted, she sails to the bustling city-state of Hexos, hoping to find a place at a university where they don’t think there’s anything untoward about providing a woman with a magical education. But as soon as Onna arrives, she’s drawn into the mysterious murder of four trolls.

Tsira is a troll who never quite fit into her clan, despite being the leader’s daughter. She decides to strike out on her own and look for work in a human city, but on her way she stumbles upon the body of a half-dead human soldier in the snow. As she slowly nurses him back to health, an unlikely bond forms between them, one that is tested when an unknown mage makes an attempt on Tsira’s life. Soon, unbeknownst to each other, Onna and Tsira both begin devoting their considerable talents to finding out who is targeting trolls, before their homeland is torn apart…

*Kat Howard, Alex Award-winning author of An Unkindness of Magicians

Unnatural Magic is the ‘trolls not gender roles!’ book, so it’s only appropriate to let it wrap up this list. Besides being a ridiculous amount of fun, this book explores both a non-human gender system, via the trolls, and gender-nonconforming humans. This is seriously one of my favourite books EVER, and is pretty much perfect in every way. (Those two facts may be related!)

That’s it from me for now. Share some of your fave genderqueer characters in fantasy and scifi in the comments!

The post Your Gender Binary Is Imaginary; Genderqueer Characters in Fantasy (+ Bonus SciFi) appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

An Open Letter to Publishers About E-Arcs

You couldn’t pay me to move to the USA, but the fact is, it’s tough to be a book blogger outside North America. Forget attending cons or taking part in giveaways; it’s virtually impossible to get a physical Advanced Reader’s Copy if you’re not a US resident. Which leaves us with digital arcs.

To me, an e-book isn’t a poorer choice; I’m physically disabled to the point that I literally can’t handle a paper book. All my books are e-books. I want e-arcs, folx.

But I want e-arcs I can actually read.

There’s no way to tell, when you apply for an arc on Netgalley or Edelweiss, what format it’s in. And that’s a problem. My response rating on Netgalley is only 60% because too often, what I receive is a PDF file – something I can’t read on my Kindle. Something I can’t read at all, because the same issue that makes a paper book too heavy for my messed-up hands means I can’t carry around my laptop or tablet to read a PDF on that instead.

On Netgalley, sometimes, if you’re lucky, the e-arc is in ePub format. I can’t read that on my Kindle either, but that’s fine; I only need about a minute with Calibre – which is a free program for editing ebook files – to turn an ePub file into something that reads perfectly on my Kindle.

Today I got my first e-arc from Edelweiss. I had two options: a PDF, which, as we’ve established, I can’t read. And an AZW3 file that would work only on my particular Kindle – presumably so I can’t upload it online somewhere and pirate it.

Fair enough. Legit concern.

But the AZW3 file? Was converted from the PDF file. And what you might not know, if you’re not kind of obsessed with ebook files and formats like myself, is that PDF doesn’t convert well into any format. The formatting breaks – lines break halfway through, paragraphs shatter into pieces, speech marks float off into the ether. And I guess some people can deal with that, but I can’t. It’s insanity-inducing.

And – look, I get it. I’m sure publishers prefer PDFs because they’re so much less attractive to pirates. And I wish I could say that’s not a fair thing to worry about, but it is – I’ve seen for myself when unscrupulous reviewers post e-arcs they’ve received online before the book is even published. That can and does destroy a book’s sales, which can destroy a writer’s career – it can certainly doom that one particular series, whose sales might never recover. The ripple effects can be huge and unequivocally awful.

But…what if you put a mark inside each e-arc? So that if someone pirates their copy – shares it online – you can trace it back to the reviewer who received that copy, and broke the law by sharing it? And take them to court? You’d really only have to do it once, I’d think, to make sure no reviewer did it again. Put the fear of all the gods into anyone tempted to try it.

Because right now, every would-be reviewer is getting punished with hard- or impossible-to-read e-arcs, when the vast majority of us would never dream of breaking the faith placed in us by sharing those e-arcs.

I don’t need to sell you on the fact that hype sells books. If you work in the publishing industry, you know it does. And I shouldn’t need to tell you that most books don’t get big marketing budgets – which means most of that hype is built up by the authors themselves (taking part in interviews and giveaways and blog tours and the like) and by book bloggers. I don’t discover the books I want to read from catalogues, or tv advertisements, or billboards or even libraries – I find them when the bloggers I follow hype the hell out of them. I find them through word of mouth. Because that’s how books actually get marketed. When readers share how much they love them.

Publishers don’t pay bloggers – and we don’t want to be paid! We do this because we freaking love it – we love reading, and we love finding new books to love, and we love waving glittery pom-poms to bring attention to our new literary loves. But it is work. Writing reviews is work, and hyping books is work, and most of us also have full-time jobs or school on top of our blogging. This is work, and we do it out of nothing but love.

So – could you at least, please, pretty please, give us e-arcs we can read? Just – use ePub as a default format. Put unique marks in each one so you can find any rulebreakers – there’s programs that will generate those marks for you – and give us e-arcs that are formatted properly, that we can read on any device we please.

We’ll be good. I swear. We love this too much not to be.

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Reaching for Immortality: Or What You Will by Jo Walton

Representation: Gender-Noncomforming characters, (very) minor queer characters
Genres: Fantasy

Or What You Will is an utterly original novel about how stories are brought forth from Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author Jo Walton.

He has been too many things to count. He has been a dragon with a boy on his back. He has been a scholar, a warrior, a lover, and a thief. He has been dream and dreamer. He has been a god.

But “he” is in fact nothing more than a spark of idea, a character in the mind of Sylvia Harrison, 73, award-winning author of thirty novels over forty years. He has played a part in most of those novels, and in the recesses of her mind, Sylvia has conversed with him for years.

But Sylvia won't live forever, any more than any human does. And he's trapped inside her cave of bone, her hollow of skull. When she dies, so will he.

Now Sylvia is starting a new novel, a fantasy for adult readers, set in Thalia, the Florence-resembling imaginary city that was the setting for a successful YA trilogy she published decades before. Of course he's got a part in it. But he also has a notion. He thinks he knows how he and Sylvia can step off the wheel of mortality altogether. All he has to do is convince her.

Whatever you think this book is going to be, you’re wrong.

Or at least, I was very wrong about this book. I was hoping… I’m not sure, exactly, but I was incredibly excited about the idea of a book about a muse. About the avatar of someone’s imagination, their creativity.

And it’s true that this is about a muse. But it’s not really about the muse.

To be honest, I really struggled with this one. I started it in March, when I received the arc, and just finished it now, in June. I got bored. Jo Walton’s writing tends to be slow and kind of luxurious, but here it feels pretty rambly. And in fairness I think that’s on purpose; the nameless muse narrates in first-person, and real people don’t speak perfectly and concisely all the time. They ramble a bit, they wander, they backtrack. It gives Or What You Will the sense that you really are being spoken to by a real person, which is kind of vital, because one of the very first things the narrative needs to do is convince the reader that the muse is a real person, something far more complicated than just a figment of Sylvia’s imagination.

Sylvia, of course, being the writer whose head the muse lives inside. The two are aware of each other; they talk to each other directly, although Sylvia is a little confused or dismayed by the muse’s insistence that he’s as real as she is. We’re not real in the same way, she tells him, seeming a little worried that he – the nameless muse is very much male – thinks that they are. But it’s pretty clear that he’s a lot more than a delusion, or an imaginary friend. As we get more and more of their story – their story, not just the book they’re writing together, but their entwined past together, the journey of Sylvia’s life and how intrinsic the muse has been to it – well. We talk about how writers need to write, storytellers need to tell stories, but this isn’t that. Their relationship, Sylvia’s and her muse, isn’t that.

It’s life or death.

And life or death is what Or What You Will revolves around: the muse doesn’t want to die when Sylvia does. The only solution, it seems, is for Sylvia not to die at all. But she lives in our world, the real world, where dying is (at least at this point in history) an inevitability. So how are they going to get around this?

I say ‘they’, but Sylvia’s not really in on the plan from the beginning. It’s more like she’s indulging the muse, letting him try this ridiculous thing. But bit by bit, she gets on board.

This is…a slow book. A meandering one. I’m not that sure I enjoyed it, but I kept turning the pages, because there’s something so…luxurious? About it. And that’s deliberate, the story Sylvia and her muse are writing is set in a world that froze during the Renaissance, and there’s a big deal made about the joyful artistic decadence of that time period, about the mindset of it. Sylvia is in Italy while she writes her book (the book, the one meant to defeat her death), and there’s so much…I want to call it hedonism, but that doesn’t seem quite right; it’s more that Sylvia is embracing all the pleasures available to her, the food and the culture and the art, revelling in it all but in a way that seems…not holy, not sanctimonious, but not gluttonous, either? It’s balanced on the line between, perfectly healthy and beautiful. It’s a quiet delight to read, which is as it should be, because it’s quiet delight that Walton is capturing in her writing.

There’s two stories going on, side by side; Sylvia’s in Italy, talking to her muse, and Dolly and Tish’s, the two Brits in Sylvia’s book who get swept into the world of one of her earlier books. I’ll be honest; I did not care about Dolly and Tish’s story. At all. It was scattered through with historical figures, and some from Shakespeare’s plays – like Miranda, Calibran, etc – and mostly seemed to exist at all to explain to the reader how the escaping-death thing was going to work. It was a lot of talking, a lot of telling. None of the characters appealed to me. I didn’t care. It was boring as heck with very contrived worldbuilding, and although that’s explained – Sylvia winces and talks about how she’d have done much better if she was crafting this fictional world ‘today’, rather than at the start of her career – it’s still pretty meh.

However, Sylvia’s own story is much more…grabbing. And emotional. Painful at times, but powerful, and rich, and moving. And happily, Or What You Will spends a lot more time with Sylvia and her muse than it does with Dolly and Tish, so it works out pretty okay.

This isn’t going on my favourites shelf; it’s certainly not my favourite of Walton’s works. But it’s a pretty solid book, and I think a lot of people will enjoy it, especially if you approach it looking for something slow and luxurious, rather than action-heavy and fast-paced.

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Books on My Summer TBR

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

It’s been a while since I did a TTT, but I’m feeling pretty ill atm and this seemed like a lovely, easy thing to work on while I get back on my feet! Most of these are books I actually have, but haven’t gotten around to reading yet, since I’ve already talked about forthcoming books I’m excited for recently.

Lifelode by Jo Walton is a book I’ve been dying to get my hands on for years – Walton + magic + normalised polyamory??? Gimme! Unfortunately, it was only published in hardback, in an extremely limited run, and unavailable for years and years. It was recently released as an ebook, though, so I really want to find the time to finally dive into it!

Cinderella is Dead has been on my radar for ages, and I can’t wait to finally get to read it! Queer Black girls taking on the patriarchy of a fairytale kingdom – 200 years after the death of Cinderella? Cinderella is far from my favourite fairytale, but we’re talking about girls who’ve had to live with her legacy, not a retelling of the story, and I’m so excited to see that unpacked and what Bayron does with it!

The Worst of All Possible Worlds wraps up one of the most unique series I’ve ever read, mixing up magic with sci-fi and setting the stakes as high as they can go. Wannabe-gods, queer racecar drivers, spaceships and found-family??? This trilogy ticks boxes I didn’t even know I had, and I’m dying to see how it all ends!

I still, still haven’t managed to complete a review of The Merciless Crow, the first book in this duet – maybe I can reread it and review it in time for the release of Faithless Hawk, because the first book is mindblowingly brilliant, and I have nothing but the highest of hopes for the sequel. This is one of those rare series where the worldbuilding – my usual addiction – is incredible, but actually manages to be overshadowed by the wonderful characters and their story! An intricate caste-system, magic drawn from teeth, dead gods, and a fierce, vicious fight for equality – this is probably one of my most-anticipated releases of the summer.

Letters From Dark Water is the last of the Love Has Claws series by Parker Foye, each of which is a standalone queer story tied together by their connection to the eerie seaside town of Lastings. Book one had a feral selkie and a nonbinary witch; book two had vampires and baking. I’m really sad this series is over, which is why I haven’t started reading this yet, but I’m definitely going to get to this over the summer.

Chain of Gold is yet another 2020 release I haven’t gotten to yet – I wanted to reread the Infernal Devices trilogy, which precedes Gold chronologically, first, but I suspect that’s not going to happen and I should just jump in. I’m especially excited about Anna, a character that’s supposed to be gender-nonconforming/genderqueer, although those terms probably aren’t going to get used in a Victorian setting.

The Princess Who Flew With Dragons is the third book in the Chocolate Heart series, a MG series revolving around a young dragon who (in human form!) works in a chocolate shop, and her friends. This book focuses on the kingdom’s youngest princess, who is definitely overdue a chance to prove herself to her older sister. These books have been smart but sweet comfort-reads, the kind that have as much in them for adults as they do kids, and I’m hoping I can get to this one soon!

Susurrus on Mars is by one of my favourite authors, Hal Duncan. His Book of All Hours duet is a criminally unknown masterpiece, and I’ve been following his career ever since. Susurrus has been waiting on my Kindle for too long now; Duncan doesn’t talk down to his readers, and with all my health problems this year I haven’t been up to putting in the work on this one. Hopefully that’ll all be cleared up soon, and I can get to this novella about ‘the gene-spliced child of the gods Zephyros and Ares flirt[ing] and seduc[ing] fleshlings on a terraformed future Mars.’

Listen, I said he doesn’t write down to the reader!

Storm of Life is the sequel to The Brilliant Death, a fantasy with an Italy-inspired setting about a young witch coming into her power – as a witch, and as a woman, even as she discovers and embraces her own genderfluidity. In Storm of Life, the mc and her (also genderfluid) lover are on a mission to save their fellow witches from the new leader of the country, who’s out to kill all of those who won’t serve him – or who aren’t useful. It’s another one I should have gotten to before now, but hey, that’s what summer holidays are for, right?

The Sunken Mall! This is the free novella written by KD Edwards, set between his books The Last Sun and The Hanged Man. This one I’m waiting to read because I want to reread Last Sun first – read all three in order. If you know anything about me you know I love the Tarot Sequence with all my heart, so I’m ridiculously excited for a brand new installment! I’m probably going to be the last fan to have read it, but I can live with that. I just want to savour it.

What’s on your tbr for the summer?

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