Soulshaking SFF For My 1000th Post!

Mermaid by Yuri Arcurs Photography

How the stars have aligned! It’s the start of Wyrd & Wonder; it’s May Day, aka Beltane, one of the most magical days of the year; AND it is MY THOUSANDTH POST DAY!

It is WILD to me that I’ve written so many posts. It’s wild that I’m still HERE, blogging – EBaD wasn’t my first attempt at running a book blog, but with all my previous attempts, I never stuck with it for very long. NOW LOOK! 1000 posts in almost-six years! Including–

354 reviews.

235 Must-Have Mondays.

164 Can’t Wait Wednesdays.

6 Unmissable Lists.

This weird little blog has come so far since I started. I’m so happy that so many people get something out of what I write; EBaD is niche as hells (niche taste in books, reviews 10x longer than anything most people want to read, so much swearing) and honestly, I’m amazed ANY of you are here at all BUT HI, THERE’S SPACE IN THE NICHE FOR ALL OF US, BE WELCOME!

The Must-Have Mondays have been such a success, and between those and the Can’t Wait Wednesdays, EBaD has given me structure that helps manage my various brain issues. Putting together, and updating, the Unmissable lists is so much fun. I love love love getting to review and boost incredible books, especially the ones that aren’t so well-known!

And besides making some fantastic friends (and acquaintances; so many people I’m not super close to, but am so happy to have in my social sphere!), learning plenty about Internety Things like hosting and seo and all kinds of analytics… I’ve opened books and found my reviews quoted in the Praise For section! That is a real thing that has happened!!! More than once!!! Meep, I still tear up when I think about it, LET’S TAKE A BRIEF PAUSE.

…Now how about we get to the part of this post that might be of interest to the rest of you, instead of me just rambling on?

Soulshakers

There are lots and lots and LOTS of books that I love. I’m constantly describing things as ‘an all-time favourite’ or ‘a new favourite’. For all that I’m picky af, I find new books to love all the time.

I’ve talked once or twice before about my Crescent Classics, the SFF that I think stands above the rest, that everyone should read. But there’s another, much smaller category within my favourites. I like to call them soulshakers – the books that are perfect. The books that feel like you were born to read them. The books you’re shy to recommend because sharing them is intimate, is like putting your heart into someone’s hands.

But I wouldn’t be writing a blog if I didn’t mind oversharing.

In no particular order, these are my soulshakers. I hope you’ll love them too.

Metal from Heaven by August Clarke
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MC, multiple lesbian secondary characters
Goodreads

For fans of  The Princess Bride and Gideon the Ninth: a bloody  lesbian revenge tale and political fantasy set in a glittering world transformed by industrial change – and simmering class warfare.

He who controls ichorite controls the world.

A malleable metal more durable than steel, ichorite is a toxic natural resource fueling national growth, and ambitious industrialist Yann Chauncey helms production of this miraculous ore. Working his foundry is an underclass of destitute workers, struggling to get better wages and proper medical treatment for those exposed to ichorite’s debilitating effects since birth.

One of those luster-touched victims, the child worker Marney Honeycutt, is picketing with her family and best friend when a bloody tragedy unfolds. Chauncey’s strikebreakers open fire.

Only Marney survives.

A decade later, as Yann Chauncey searches for a suitable political marriage for his ward, Marney sees the perfect opportunity for revenge. With the help of radical bandits and their stolen wealth, she must masquerade as an aristocrat to win over the calculating Gossamer Chauncey and kill the man who slaughtered her family and friends. But she is not the only suitor after Lady Gossamer’s hand, leading her to play twisted elitist games of intrigue. And Marney’s luster-touched connection to the mysterious resource and its foundry might put her in grave danger—or save her from it.

H. A. Clarke’s adult fantasy debut, writing as August Clarke, Metal from Heaven is a punk-rock murder ballad tackling labor issues and radical empowerment against the relentless grind of capitalism.

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Metal From Heaven is the opposite of a lobotomy: it’s the euphoria of a eureka moment, a galaxy-brain flash that goes on and on and on. I’m far from the only one to call it feverish, hallucinogenic, decadent, a wildly queer anarchist hymn and war cry. Marney is so completely fucked up, I want to lick the worldbuilding like frosting from the bowl, the prose is a bejewelled neon feast. It’s feral and vicious and gorgeous, a gem-studded knuckleduster, and if you can’t keep up it’ll leave you in the dust. There’s so many layers and it’s so damn vivid and it’s true like a punch to the throat. This book will radicalise you.

Every word of it is perfect.

My review!

Saint Death's Daughter (Saint Death, #1) by C.S.E. Cooney
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: Brown pansexual MC, nonbinary love interest, queerplatonic-coded F/F
Goodreads

Fun, froofy and glorious: a coming-of-age story in a new trilogy from World Fantasy Award-winning author C.S.E. Cooney.

Nothing complicates life like Death.

Lanie Stones, the daughter of the Royal Assassin and Chief Executioner of Liriat, has never led a normal life. Born with a gift for necromancy and a literal allergy to violence, she was raised in isolation in the family’s crumbling mansion by her oldest friend, the ancient revenant Goody Graves.

When her parents are murdered, it falls on Lanie and her cheerfully psychotic sister Nita to settle their extensive debts or lose their ancestral home—and Goody with it. Appeals to Liriat's ruler to protect them fall on indifferent ears… until she, too, is murdered, throwing the nation's future into doubt.

Hunted by Liriat’s enemies, hounded by her family’s creditors and terrorised by the ghost of her great-grandfather, Lanie will need more than luck to get through the next few months—but when the goddess of Death is on your side, anything is possible.

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Saint Death’s Daughter is a firework, bright and glittering, rapturous, athegravegant and ornate and overjoyed. It uses necromancy as a paean to Life and Living and Love, takes on so many of the genre conventions with a necromancer who’s allergic to violence – physically, literally allergic! – and subverts everything it doesn’t remake entirely. There are so many glorious footnotes. It looks like something familiar, but instead it’s something new and fresh and sparkling; your fingertips fizz when you touch its pages. It’s an antidote to cynicism without giving up one drop of its dizzying, dazzling richness. It’s so incredibly joyful; it revels in itself, and invites you into the revel too. Every sentence is a poem, every page a dream I don’t want to wake from.

Every word is perfect.

My review!

Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
Representation: Bisexual MC, minor BIPOC characters
Goodreads

Radiance is a decopunk pulp SF alt-history space opera mystery set in a Hollywood-and solar system-very different from our own, from Catherynne M. Valente, the phenomenal talent behind the New York Timesbestselling The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making.

Severin Unck's father is a famous director of Gothic romances in an alternate 1986 in which talking movies are still a daring innovation due to the patent-hoarding Edison family. Rebelling against her father's films of passion, intrigue, and spirits from beyond, Severin starts making documentaries, traveling through space and investigating the levitator cults of Neptune and the lawless saloons of Mars. For this is not our solar system, but one drawn from classic science fiction in which all the planets are inhabited and we travel through space on beautiful rockets. Severin is a realist in a fantastic universe.

But her latest film, which investigates the disappearance of a diving colony on a watery Venus populated by island-sized alien creatures, will be her last. Though her crew limps home to earth and her story is preserved by the colony's last survivor, Severin will never return.

Told using techniques from reality TV, classic film, gossip magazines, and meta-fictional narrative, Radiance is a solar system-spanning story of love, exploration, family, loss, quantum physics, and silent film.

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Radiance is a starship sailing into wonders unknown and unthought of, bright in opalescent black and white, with endless possibilities in its galaxy-studded silences. It is the odd one out on this list because it is the odd one out on any list, every list, because it has no interest at all in being like anybody else, not in form or genre or plot or worldbuilding. It is a shapeshifter, more multi-faceted than any jewel: fairytale and noir and gossip column, Sappho’s poetry alongside interviews and radio scripts, Gothic drama and documentary, all wrapped up in a decopunk fantasia of space travel. It is decadent with stories, overflowing with stories, and you can say that of many of Valente’s books (Orphan Tales, most obviously, but Palimpsest and Refridgerator Monologues too) but this is the one that is most unafraidly, fantastically, splendidly strange.

Every word is perfect.

Kushiel's Legacy: Kushiel's Dart / Kushiel's Chosen / Kushiel's Avatar (Phèdre's Trilogy #1-3) by Jacqueline Carey
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, High Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bisexual MC, secondary Roma-coded character, queernorm setting
Goodreads

The first trilogy in Jacqueline Carey's sprawling—and darkly sensual—New York Times bestselling series.

The land of Terre d'Ange is a place of unsurpassed beauty and grace. It is said that angels found the land and saw it was good...and the ensuing race that rose from the seed of angels and men live by one simple rule: Love as thou wilt. Set in a world of cunning poets, deadly courtiers, heroic traitors, and a truly Machiavellian villainess, this is a tale of grandeur, luxuriance, sacrifice, betrayal, and deeply laid conspiracies.

Kushiel’s Dart — Phèdre nó Delaunay is sold into indentured servitude as a child, her bond is purchased by Anafiel Delaunay, a nobleman with a very special mission...and the first one to recognize who and what she is: one pricked by Kushiel's Dart, chosen to forever experience pain and pleasure as one.

Kushiel’s Chosen — The hands of the gods weigh heavily upon Phèdre's brow, and they are not finished with her. While the young queen who sits upon the throne is well loved by the people, there are those who believe another should wear the crown...

Kushiel’s Avatar — Phèdre and Joscelin journey on a dangerous path that will carry them to fabled courts and splendid vistas, to distant lands where madness reigns and souls are currency, and down a fabled river to a land forgotten by most of the world. And to a power so mighty that none dare speak its name.

Kushiel's Legacy
Kushiel's Dart
Kushiel's Chosen
Kushiel's Avatar

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Phedre’s Trilogy – Kushiel’s Dart, Kushiel’s Chosen, Kushiel’s Avatar – is a depthless treasure casket, luxurious prose and worldbuilding forming a parure with one of the unlikeliest heroines I’ve ever come across. These books are velvet and cream, spun sugar and ice, the burning glory of the divine gilding every impossible line. The intensity is almost impossible. This is High Fantasy that spirals into Epic Fantasy – the fate of kingdoms becoming the fate of the world – where the intrigue of gods is even more complex than that of mortals playing for thrones. It’s an exploration, examination of just how merciless a law is love as thou wilt; it’s a breathtaking substantiation on love as a fifth fundamental force.

Every word is perfect.

The Mercy Makers (The Moon Heresies, #1) by Tessa Gratton
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Brown bisexual MC, queernorm setting
Published on: 17th June 2025
Goodreads

A talented heretic must decide between the pursuit of forbidden magic, or the ecstasy of forbidden love—either way, her choice will upend the world, in the start of a sweeping, romantic epic fantasy trilogy by New York Times bestselling author Tessa Gratton.

Can an empire trip and fall on a mere strand of silk?

Iriset is a prodigy and an outlaw. The daughter of a powerful criminal, she dons her alter ego Silk to create magical disguises for those in her father’s organization, but she longs to do more with her talent: to enhance what it means to be human by giving people wings, night-sight, and other abilities; to unlock the possibilities of gender and parenthood; to cure disease and even to end mortality itself.

Everything changes when her father is captured and sentenced to death. To save him, Iriset must infiltrate the palace and the empire’s fanatical ruling family. There, she realizes she has a chance—and an obligation—to bring down the entire corrupt system. She'll have to entangle herself in the lives of the emperor and his sister, getting them to trust and even to love her. But love is a two-way street, and Iriset’s own heart holds the most mysterious and impenetrable magic of all.

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The Mercy Makers is a nebula of silk and light and magic, auroric, birthing star after star after star. It is lushly hedonistic in prose and imagery and imagination – it is so sinfully indulgent in its imagining, resplendent with it, exulting in it, triumphant in its gorgeous glory. Every line says bigger, stranger, more beautiful, more: every page goes further, pouring wonders between your hands, into your mind, stealing your heart while you’re distracted with them. This is a book in love with the act of creation, silken and intricate, lips parted and teeth bared, every sentence a seduction.

Every word is perfect.

What are some of your soulshakers?

The post Soulshaking SFF For My 1000th Post! appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.