Must-Have Monday #184
Must-Have Monday is a feature highlighting which of the coming week’s new releases I’m excited for. It is not meant to be a comprehensive list of all books being published that week; only those I’m interested in out of those I’m aware of! The focus is diverse SFF, but other genres sneak in occasionally too.
FOUR books this week!
(Books are listed in order of pub date, then Adult SFF, Adult Other, YA SFF, YA Other, MG SFF.)
The Book Censor's Library by Bothayna Al-Essa, Ranya Abdelrahman, Sawad Hussain Genres: Adult, Speculative Fiction
Protagonist Age: 30s/40s?
Published on: 30th April 2024
Goodreads
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A perilous and fantastical satire of banned books, secret libraries, and the looming eye of an all-powerful government.
The new book censor hasn’t slept soundly in weeks. By day he combs through manuscripts at a government office, looking for anything that would make a book unfit to publish―allusions to queerness, unapproved religions, any mention of life before the Revolution. By night the characters of literary classics crowd his dreams, and pilfered novels pile up in the house he shares with his wife and daughter. As the siren song of forbidden reading continues to beckon, he descends into a netherworld of resistance fighters, undercover booksellers, and outlaw librarians trying to save their history and culture.
Reckoning with the global threat to free speech and the bleak future it all but guarantees, Bothayna Al-Essa marries the steely dystopia of Orwell’s 1984 with the madcap absurdity of Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, resulting in a dreadful twist worthy of Kafka. The Book Censor’s Library is a warning call and a love letter to stories and the delicious act of losing oneself in them.
I’m not sure this is precisely genre-fic, but I’ve been hearing amazing things about it, and the premise is kinda fascinating. Plus, I definitely need to be reading more translated works!
The Poisons We Drink by Bethany Baptiste Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Black bisexual MC
Protagonist Age: 16/17?
Published on: 30th April 2024
Goodreads
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In a country divided between humans and witchers, Venus Stoneheart hustles as a brewer making illegal love potions to support her family.
Love potions is a dangerous business. Brewing has painful, debilitating side effects, and getting caught means death or a prison sentence. But what Venus is most afraid of is the dark, sentient magic within her.
Then an enemy's iron bullet kills her mother, Venus’s life implodes. Keeping her reckless little sister Janus safe is now her responsibility. When the powerful Grand Witcher, the ruthless head of her coven, offers Venus the chance to punish her mother's killer, she has to pay a steep price for revenge. The cost? Brew poisonous potions to enslave D.C.'s most influential politicians.
As Venus crawls deeper into the corrupt underbelly of her city, the line between magic and power blurs, and it's hard to tell who to trust…Herself included.
Everything about this sounds epic??? I did have a go at reading the arc earlier this year, but it hit a few triggers for me; the actual writing, though, seemed great, and I loved the cast! Definitely encouraging anyone interested to give it an go; just pay attention to the content warnings at the start of the book.
To a Darker Shore by Leanne Schwartz Genres: Fantasy, YA
Representation: Plus-sized/fat autistic MC
Protagonist Age: 16/17?
Published on: 30th April 2024
Goodreads
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A da Vinci-esque teen girl inventor on a Dante-esque journey through hell to save her best friend.
Plain, poor, plus-size, and autistic, Alesta grew up trying to convince her kingdom that she’s too useful to be sacrificed like so many of their country’s poor to appease the infernal monster across the poison sea in hell.
When Alesta’s attempt to prove herself with inventions goes awry, her best friend and heir to the throne, Kyrian, takes the blame expecting leniency―and ends up tithed in her place.
To end the sacrifices forever, Alesta plans to kill the monster that killed her friend. She travels to the depths of hell only to find Kyrian, alive, but monstrously transformed.
There’s no escaping hell or their deeper feelings for one another, and the farther they go, the closer they come to uncovering a truth about the tithings that threatens to invoke the wrath of not only monsters but the gods as well.
Another amazing-sounding YA fantasy this week! An autistic inventor out to rescue her turned-into-a-monster bestie/love interest? From the Underworld??? Yes PLEASE!
Infaust by T.D. Cloud, Ambi Sun Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: M/M
Published on: 1st May 2024
Goodreads
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A witch with a dead familiar is an outlier and an ill-omen to every village they pass through. Rehan Nadir is one such witch. The only jobs available to him are terrible ones, and vagrancy is his only recourse… At least, it was until he heard tell of the town of Hamelin’s plight. Stories of a malicious entity, a chaos god, have tormented the village for hundreds of years, and like clockwork tragedy has struck once more: while the adults gathered elsewhere, the children were spirited away. No trace of them has been seen since. The town is desperate to bring them back. Very desperate.
Finding and returning the lost children would be just the thing to give Rehan a new chance at the life he lost after the death of his familiar, and if all it takes is killing a god of chaos, then he’s more than ready to take the plunge and open that door.
Unfortunately, he just didn’t anticipate opening a few more in the midst of dealing the finishing blow.
Infaust is a dark romance recounting the tale of the witch Rehan Nadir and the elusive chaos god known only as the Piper. Trapped in a world where even the very dirt wants them dead, the two must depend on one another to escape—and along the way realize that perhaps the definition of a happily ever after really is a subjective one.
In describing this, the author said ‘if you love your doves dead, seasoned, and served on a magic-tinged platter, look no further’, which, not gonna lie, is IMMENSELY intriguing to me. Also, calling it ‘enemies-to-enemies that fuck very unhealthily’ makes me want to laugh out loud. It’s Faust crossed with the Pied Piper, a legit CHAOS GOD is in the mix, and, just for the icing on the cake, that freaking COVER?! I am all but FOAMING AT THE MOUTH for this one!!!
Will you be reading any of these? Let me know!
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