Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (6/23/26) – Heaven’s Graveyard

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

After my Idolfire freakout last week, I knew I had to get my hands on Heaven’s Graveyard as soon as I could. I put it on hold, but mercifully, it came in way sooner than I thought! YIPPEEEE!! It wasn’t as enchanting as Idolfire, but those are huge shoes to fill—Heaven’s Graveyard is still a cut above the rest.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Heaven’s Graveyard – Grace Curtis

Coda Callanuny has thrown herself into her university work. A student of archaeology, she’s been bent on solving a mystery that she’s been chasing since childhood: proving that Aleya, a figure of myth, was a real person and not a fairytale. But when a beloved professor—the only one who believes her theory—suddenly turns up dead, her chase for history becomes a chase for a murderer. It turns out that her professor’s findings could change the world, and in the wrong hands, could spell disaster. With the knowledge of a sunken, magical city in ruins, Cod must fight to protect the secrets that governments could kill for—and to protect the ones she loves.

TW/CW: murder, violence, misogyny, descriptions of injury, war themes, religious bigotry (fictional) animal cruelty, toxic relationship

First off, can we stop to appreciate how gorgeous the cover is? Aled Thompson’s artwork is truly stunning.

There. Have you taken sufficient appreciation time? Very well, onto the review…

Once again—like Idolfire, which was billed as science fantasy for…reasons, I guess, Heaven’s Graveyard isn’t science fantasy either. I’d put it more in speculative fiction or fantasy, since this is a fantastical setting and magic exists, but said magic doesn’t play a central role; there also isn’t enough “new” technology to qualify as sci-fi. But enough about my ramblings about genre misclassification and mismarketing, let’s get into how excellent Heaven’s Graveyard is!

With Heaven’s Graveyard, Curtis proves that she is a master of worldbuilding. Watching the more archaic world in Idolfire transform into something semi-modern was a fascinating feat. In terms of technology, I’d say we’re somewhere at the equivalent of the 1900’s-1930’s (radios, fantasy forms of high-speed transportation, fairly advanced warfare methods, etc.); aside from being a breath of fresh air in a genre where medieval and Victorian settings reign supreme, it was planned out so meticulously. Between the explorations of politics, education, and religion, it felt as vibrant and real as Curtis’s other worlds. I particularly liked how Curtis explored the rise of the new Procumbent religion, and how it had come to dominate much of the world and how it seeped into said politics and education. Stepping into Heaven’s Graveyard felt like I’d gotten a ticket to visit this world, which is a must for good genre fiction!

As always, Curtis’s characters shone in Heaven’s Graveyard. The central characters lacked some of the oomph that made Idolfire stick with me—I loved Coda (and Sparrow was despicable, but excellently-written as a manipulative but charming prick), but she lacked the pull that Aleya and Kirby had on me. I think part of it was just that kind of grand, mythic arc that they had wasn’t present here, and although Cod’s arc was emotional, it didn’t move me nearly as much as the former’s. Granted, I knew going in that it wasn’t going to be the same, but I just feel like the full effects of Cod and Sparrow’s disastrous relationship were glossed over, to the point where it almost felt like an afterthought. Thal grew on me much more than I expected, and I loved the relationship that she and Cod had towards the end. Like Idolfire, all of the kooky side characters felt so real and made the world feel so much more lived-in, and every glimpse made the world so delightfully human.

Like Idolfire, Heaven’s Graveyard excels at the balancing act of pairing humor with darkness. In this case, it applied to the murder mystery side of the plot. In spite of the murder of one of Cod’s beloved mentors, Curtis’s take on mystery was surprisingly funny. Most of that came from the fact that, in the first half of the novel, the main obstacle that Cod faced was the infinite layers of bureaucracy from the university and her colleagues thinking that she’s gone nuts. Yet Curtis maintains the stakes—both external and personal—involved in the mystery. I loved the first reveal about Nivela, and I loved how it tied into how this novel examined how history and historical discoveries are often manipulated for political gain. There’s a thematic thread from Idolfire about revelations that could shatter the carefully maintained foundation that a country/empire/etc. has built for itself that I appreciated. Fast-paced and full of mystery, Curtis’s blend of genres was a success.

It’s clear that Heaven’s Graveyard comes from a deep passion for archaeology and history. On the surface level, I loved Curtis’s depiction of historians and academia, from Cod’s relentless search for the truth to the bureaucratic hoops that she has to endure, even in a fantasy world. Cod’s quest to prove that Aleya was real formed the core of her character, but I loved how it tied into her character arc and Curtis’s exploration of history and obsession. Cod’s quest becomes one that blurs the boundaries of genuine desire to uncover history and her own ego, and I loved the nuance that Curtis afforded it. It also provided a timely commentary on how we often feel the need to push aside the wishes of other people and cultures in the pursuit of knowledge, and without spoiling anything, I love how Cod comes to the realization that she does. It shows not just a deep reverence for archaeology and historians, but a love for the people whose bones that this history once belonged to.

All in all, a masterful blend of fantasy, speculative fiction, and mystery that made every page worth the ride. 4.25 stars!

Heaven’s Graveyard is a companion novel to Idolfire, which is set 2,000 years before this story in the same universe; however, according to Curtis, they can be read separately from each other. Grace Curtis is also the author of Floating Hotel and Frontier.

Today’s song:

today’s oddly specific song fragment that I love: the way that tom waits says the word “mackerel”

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 6/21/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles, and Happy Father’s Day! At least half of the music that gets into these posts is from my dad, and sharing music with him is one of my favorite things, so thank you 🩵

This week: does anybody remember that Instagram account that was just toilets with threatening auras? Introducing my million-dollar idea, “Brian Eno songs with threatening auras,” which totally isn’t niche and would gain so much traction.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 6/21/26

“Primitive Painters” – Felt

This one was a way-homer for me. I think it took me at least until a few months ago to really appreciate this song. When I was a kid, I remember my dad playing this in the car, and I think it just had that fatal combination of having droning vocals (Lawrence’s voice still isn’t particularly my cup of tea) and being over six minutes long. Perfect recipe for me zoning out and daydreaming about being in some fantasy world until it ended. Strangely, even when I’d just graduated from high school and my Cocteau Twins awakening had freshly happened, “Primitive Painters” still didn’t click for me.

Again, still not 100% on board with Lawrence—his voice has a very droning quality, and apparently he and Felt took a lot of influence from Television and Tom Verlaine, somebody else whose voice I also can’t bring myself to like. Everything about “Primitive Painters” is objectively so gorgeous that it’s easy to forgive. That guitar tone in the intro is so crystalline that it sounds less like a guitar and more of what I imagine how things would sound inside of a cracked geode. The dreamlike lyrics, according to Lawrence, spoke to “wanting to be in a select group…imagine groups of really cool kids hanging out in galleries, not pubs. That was my sort of conception,” which I never would’ve gathered; his visions of fire-breathing dragons and ships on empty seas would’ve lead me elsewhere. But it makes the defiant chorus of “you should see my trail of disgrace” even more defiant, becoming a confident flagpole planted in the dirt declaring allegiance to your own individuality. That brings us to what I think is the best part of the track—Elizabeth Fraser makes everything better, and her enchanting voice elevates “Primitive Painters” skyward.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Unexploded Remnants – Elaine Gallagher – “I just wish my life could be strange as a conspiracy/I hold out hope but there’s no way of being what I want to be/The dragons blow fire, angels fly, spirits wither in the air/I’m just me I can’t deny, I’m neither here, there nor anywhere…”

“Driving Me Backwards” – Brian Eno

The other day, I was talking to my brother, who had finally listened to Here Come the Warm Jets on a plane ride. He didn’t like it as much as Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, which baffled me, until I remembered that he was listening to songs like this. This song could feasibly make me go apeshit if I was 30,000 feet in the air.

Terrible way to sell “Driving Me Backwards,” I know. I used to skip around it whenever I first listened to Here Come the Warm Jets too. But it came on shuffle recently, and it was flat-out hypnotic. From such a simple skeleton—Brian Eno built this song on “only three chords, each different from the other by only one note”—blooms what might be his most densely-packed and foreboding tracks. It really does feel downright menacing, what with said three chords played like a dirge on an out-of-tune piano. Robert Fripp’s guitar zips like blips of radar, but on the steady rhythm of the repetitive piano, it feels like you’re being marched to the edge of a cliff. None of the lyrics on this album have a ton of structure, and yet combined with the atmosphere of the song, I get this image of the most dreaded possible scenario of meeting the parents: in my head, it’s this ’50s-style nuclear family (“Meet my relations/All of them grinning like facepacks”) and the girlfriend they’re giving you permission to date traps them too (“Now I’ve found a sweetheart/Treats me good, just like an armchair.”) That repetition, something Eno used to all sorts of effects later on in his career, makes “Driving Me Backwards” feel like you’re being pinned to the wall, but agonizingly slowly—whoever’s doing it is making every second of anticipation sink it.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Saltcrop – Yume Kitasei – “I try to think about nothing/Difficult, I’m most temperamental/I gave up my good living…”

“Television” – IDLES

I still adore IDLES, and I feel like only something drastic will change it. But “Television” makes me sort of see where people are coming from with the criticism, because it’s basically the punk equivalent of this. And you know what? I’m completely on board. I think it’s so wonderful that IDLES has made a name off of having an aggressive, angry sound and image for the band, but making it into a Trojan horse for some of the most genuine and uplifting music out there. Self-love is very punk, after all, if you consider that, like Joe Talbot details in this song, that it’s tied to capitalism—companies want to make a profit off of you feeling inadequate and not looking like whichever models are in at the moment, and to reject that consumerism is very punk. It’s all worth it just to hear Talbot yell “LOVE YOURSELF!” in a tone usually reserved for wrestling announcers.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Chameleon Moon – RoAnna Sylver – “If someone talked to you/The way you do to you/I’d put their teeth through/Love yourself!”

“Lonely But Exciting Road” – FKA Twigs

I love a closing track that’s so clearly a Closing Track. Sure, a lot of the effort in it feels like it was put into being capital-A Anthemic, but for the most part, it works exactly as it should. Though I’m really not familiar with FKA Twigs and her work, she’s often lumped in with a lot of the weird women musicians that I admire—namely Björk, which makes sense, given that they’re both making boundary-pushing music that trends towards electronic. And nobody could be as weird as Björk, but like her, FKA Twigs is pushing through the embrace of exploring the adventure of being an individual and a trailblazer: “It might be heaven that’s coming my way/It’s gonna be a lonely but exciting road/And I’ll be finding myself on the way/It’s gonna be a lonеly but exciting road.” It’s such a beautiful sentiment, and the soaring, wordless section after the chorus reminded me of Kate Bush, another woman who paved the same path—it’s definitely got some “Cloudbusting” DNA in there. But for anyone, it’s such a hopeful sentiment, one that I’ve been trying to embody in the past few years, knowing that the path I’m taking with my life is unconventional, but wholly right for me. It’s so exciting that you forget about the lonely sometimes.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Deep – Rivers Solomon – “So you make it up/In the hope that you’ll be something more than before/Be more than my mother was, no/Be more than her mother and her mother was/’Cause they say/’We gotta give to our children what we never was…'”

“Ex-Con” – Smog

At the worst of times, socializing feels like wearing a human suit; I’m hyper-aware of what I should say, what’s normal to say and what’s unacceptable, and the sheer effort of all that deflates me by the end of the day. (Being neurodivergent isn’t what it’s cracked up to be by people on TikTok, kids. I feel like neurotypicals are treating neurodivergence the way people threw around “anxiety” and “depression” in the 2010’s. Free me from this prison.) Bill Callahan seems to understand: “Whenever I get dressed up/I feel like an ex-con trying to make good.” “Ex-Con” is an upbeat track that belies a somber undercurrent of alienation beneath it—the paradox of feeling most at home alone in your room, but feeling the most out of place in the company of other people. The repeated final line about feeling “like a robot by the river/Looking for a drink” jumped out at me from the first listen, but it might be one of Callahan’s cleverest lyrics; to me, it speaks to the desire to be a normal, functioning, conformed person, but knowing that it would probably eat you up from the inside out. The water would probably short-circuit this robot if it were to drink it. The drink of water is just out of reach. “Ex-Con” is so poignant in that way—it’s such a gentle song, but it lays bare how the worst of isolation feels.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers, #2) – Becky Chambers – “Alone in my room/I feel such a warmth for the community/Oh, but out on the streets/Out on the streets/I feel like a robot by the river/Looking for a drink…”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (6/16/26) – Idolfire

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles! Halfway through 2026 now…😵‍💫

If you told me about 3 years ago that I was this excited for a new Grace Curtis book, I wouldn’t have believed you. Full disclosure: I didn’t like Frontier, but the premise of Floating Hotel was so endearing to me that I took a chance on it…and loved it. And here I am now. (Special shoutout to Kat @ The Lily Cafe, who is the reason that I know that this book exists. Thanks, Kat!) I had a feeling I was going to enjoy Idolfire, but as we’re officially halfway through the year…this might be one of my favorite books that I’ve read this year!

Enjoy this week’s review!

Idolfire – Grace Curtis

After illness tears her family apart, Kirby of Wall’s End sets off on the road to Nivela, a famed kingdom that has fallen from grace, but retains the promise of magic beyond its gates. Across the world, Aleya Ana-Ulai is searching for Nivela too, eager to prove herself after being abandoned by her family. When these two women from disparate regions meet on the road, neither knows that their togetherness is key to their survival. But the road to Nivela is long and treacherous, and it seems to hold everything but the answers they need within it. Aleya and Kirby must decide if the promise of Nivela is worth it—and if they’ll be able to survive at all.

TW/CW: violence, blood, war themes, loss of loved ones, child death, infertility

First off—this isn’t a slight on the book, but if you’re going in (like I did) expecting science fantasy, Idolfire is not that. This is straight up fantasy. I’m convinced that the “science fantasy” thing was tacked on for marketing reasons after Curtis wrote two sci-fi novels. Just be forewarned about that…and the fact that this book came dangerously close to destroying me. This might be one of the best books I’ve read all year.

Grace Curtis’s prose keeps getting better and better with each novel she writes. It’s prose that gave me genuine, heartwarming joy to read. She just has this way of making everything, from the setting to the subtle glances between characters, so wholly human; it goes beyond feeling lived-in and real and becomes something with a real heartbeat. Where Curtis succeeds is in shedding light on the unsaid; slight turns of phrase became quietly heartwarming or heartbreaking with a single word. Her renderings of the varied landscapes that Aleya and Kirby travel through are so rich and full of life. Every line of dialogue is razor-sharp, both in their humor and their power to devastate. If you want proof of Curtis’s improvement as a writer, Idolfire is the perfect evidence.

One of the strongest aspects of Idolfire was how it balanced humor and more sobering, serious themes. Curtis has really honed her talent for humor—there were so many moments throughout that were laugh-out-loud funny. Aleya and Kirby had such excellent chemistry (more on that later), but their separate senses of humor pinged off of each other exceptionally well, making for a fantastical road trip that never had a dull moment. And yet, Curtis gave the same amount of care to depict the darker themes of the novel alongside the lighter ones. Curtis’s depiction of war was one that has stayed with me; her descriptions of it have no interest in glorifying its purpose or its participants. Even for a novel billed with swordfighting, her sparse, devastating language in describing the horrors of war were so impactful in a genre where there’s often a degree of romantic language ascribed to something so horrendous. From the effect it has on the minds of individual soldiers to the scars that it wrought across the lands of Idolfire, Curtis explored every facet of living during wartime. Yet Curtis had the same level of care in the lighthearted and dark aspects of Idolfire—for a novel like this, it was a very difficult balance to strike, but Curtis absolutely clinched it, making for a novel that was, above all, human.

I didn’t think that Curtis’s character writing could get much better after Floating Hotel, but I was proven wrong. Although I loved the slice-of-life roving between multiple characters, I think that narrowing her focus down to two central characters did a great service to their development. Aleya and Kirby were some of the most memorable characters that Curtis has ever written. A less talented writer would’ve slapped a hasty grumpy-sunshine dynamic on them and left it at that, but they both had such richly layered personalities. Both of them had trauma so deeply embedded in their psyches, but Curtis did an excellent job of showing us how it manifested in both of them and shaped their personalities. I loved how Aleya’s more reserved, stoic nature played off of Kirby’s more mischievous personality, but the deeper you get, the more you realize that both of these traits serve as shields for both of them. They had such immediate, lovable chemistry, and the progression from begrudging companions on the road to lovers was impeccably paced, and every step of that progression felt so natural—and instantly lovable to root for. Without spoiling anything, things do turn out bittersweet for them, but I think the way that Curtis ended their story was poignant and fitting for both of them.

I also adored the road trip plot of Idolfire, and it kept me guessing constantly. Curtis’s talent for character writing also applied to the menagerie of weirdos that Aleya and Kirby met along the road to Nivela. Even the smallest glimpses we got of the denizens of Idolfire‘s expansive fantasy world were so fleshed-out, and they added so much life to the already fantastic worldbuilding. Balance is something that Curtis clearly has been honing, because like the balance between levity and darkness, there was a great balance of more action-packed moments—such as Aleya’s many swordfights—and downtime with Aleya and Kirby. The pacing was neat as a pin, and even the downtime between the more climactic parts of the novel were measured out to near-perfection. Idolfire really was a balancing act in so many ways, but Curtis toed the lines she set with enviable ease.

And if there’s anything that you can expect Curtis to do well with, it’s sharp commentary on empires and imperialism. Floating Hotel excelled at that as a point in the background, and Idolfire honed in on it even more. I think what Idolfire brings to the conversation is how ideas shape the image of an empire. Fully acknowledging that Curtis is British and I’m just projecting my experience onto this book, but I couldn’t help but think about Nivela—and Aleya and Kirby’s goals—in terms of the permanently out of reach “American dream,” and how an empire can build up an idea of itself while hiding a crumbling foundation beneath it. The further they go on their journey, the more they see the destructive aftermath of an idea twisted into something that excuses genocide and imperialism. I also liked how it tied into the magic system, with belief being what makes certain magic work/not work, and how that translated into the belief in Nivela, which has been faltering to the point of destruction. (Without getting into spoilery territory, there’s some really fascinating stuff about the very literal, human cost that this has in the world of Idolfire.) In the end, I think it was a beautiful meditation on the power of ideas, and how they can be twisted into something so terrible that it swallows the world, but how we can use that same power to create a more equitable world worth living in.

Ultimately, with ratings like these, there’s always that slight oomph that pushes it into 5 star territory. I think there’s still a few small nitpicks that made 5 stars not justifiable, but it sure was close. Overall, Idolfire was a deeply moving and human road trip fantasy, a meditation on the nature of the ideas and idols we hold up in our minds. 4.75 stars!

Idolfire is a standalone, but it has a companion novel, Heaven’s Graveyard, set 2,000 years later in the same universe. Grace Curtis is also the author of Frontier and Floating Hotel.

Today’s song:

I’m sorry, Let’s Dance (1983), I was unfamiliar with your game

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 6/14/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: in a concerning reversion to the summer of 2024, I’m excessively yapping about Cate Le Bon and Cocteau Twins in the same post again.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 6/14/26

“Pitch the Baby” – Cocteau Twins

Buckle up, folks, it’s Cocteau Twins summer…again.

Heaven or Las Vegas never gets old. Four years later, and I still haven’t recovered from the moment that I heard “Cherry-coloured Funk” in art class in high school. There was no turning back. But I did cave and grab it on vinyl, and it was about time I experienced the album again. Once more, there’s not a bad song on the album, but surprises surface with every listen. Lush is the best word that comes to mind with this album; over the course of their discography, Elizabeth Fraser and co. had been defining their niche of atmospheric, worlds-within-songs shrouded in mist and mystery. Blue Bell Knoll was the first step in making each song feel like a world, but Heaven or Las Vegas, to me, is where those worlds began blooming with lifeforms. Every distinguishable word that comes out of Fraser’s gibberish fog feels like you’re being let in on a secret. Each listen makes you feel a part of their world, like they’ve given you a ticket to their far-flung, alien planet.

“Pitch the Baby” is one of those songs where the glimpses of the comprehensible words feel like this. Despite what all the memes associated with this song, nobody’s going full fastball special on a baby, not to worry. In fact, it seems to be quite the opposite; though 99% of the lyrics are predictably murky, much of it appears to be addressed to Fraser’s then newborn baby: “I only want to love you/I’m so happy to get to care for you.” In spite of the turmoil leading up to this album’s release, Fraser claimed that her daughter being born gave her a sense of clarity, and that many of the tracks were “reputedly recorded…while holding Lucy-Belle in her arms.” Here, the circularity of “Pitch the Baby” feels like a cradle: it has this looping, dream-pop structure, but it’s always given me the feeling of something being shielded. It boasts some of Simon Raymonde’s funkiest, most iconic basslines, and the rapid bloop-bloop-bloop of the synths form Saturn rings around the track. It’s tantalizingly easy to lose yourself in, but in the end, the contained world it brings to life feels less like a song and more like a selfless act of love.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Under the Earth, Over the Sky – Emily McCosh – “I only want to love you/I’m so happy to get to care for you…”

“Remembering Me” – Cate Le Bon

I keep gushing about Pompeii over and over again, but somehow I’ve barely touched on the aesthetics of the album! It’s so distinct and very Cate Le Bon—I love all of the imagery of statues and the emphasis on static poses (evoking the sort of frozen visions of past selves that becomes one of the album’s main themes), but the neon, avant-garde makeup and costumes too. I forgot how much I loved the music video for “Remembering Me,” which stands on its own well, but…if those opening shots aren’t a tribute to David Bowie’s “Life On Mars?” music video, then I don’t know what is. (If you need more evidence to support this, I suggest Reward‘s touching closing track, “Meet the Man.”)

I’m kind of baffled to this day that the second half of Pompeii didn’t hit me as much as the first, because “Remembering Me” hasn’t gotten out of my head since. I think on the first listen, it felt like it leaned too much into the ’80s pastiche. I think I was, once again, too wrapped up in “Dirt on the Bed” and such to really absorb this song. Now, it stands out to me as one of the more emotional tracks. Behind the catchy, weirdo synth-pop curtain is a story about stories—more specifically, the ones we tell ourselves. The more I listen, the more it feels like the scene in Barbie where Margot Robbie blurts out “Do you guys ever think about dying?” in the middle of a glitzy, sparkling party. Le Bon called it “a neurotic diary entry that questions notions of legacy and warped sentimentalism in the desperate need to self-mythologise“; for Le Bon, who had to face all of this while returning to her childhood home during the pandemic, it became a tug-of-war between the self that she was and the self that she wanted to be perceived as: “In the remake of my life/I moved in straight lines/My hair was beautiful.” The verses confidently strut, catwalk-like, as the pedestaled, false version of herself—stronger, more confident, more beautiful—before the chorus tears everything down. You can’t get any more candid about this than “Facedown in heirlooms.” Whew.

The rest of “Remembering Me” is full of just as many sucker punch lyrics: “I wore the heat like/A hundred birthday cakes/Under one sun/I didn’t need anyone/On my own luck/I arrived just to seat the choir/And bowled them over.” It’s the kind of vulnerability that gets more impactful with each listen—I’ve certainly gotten into those places where I’ve been so determined to be confident and self-reliant that I worked myself into a corner, and only asked for help when things had bubbled up and exploded in my face. Like it or not, we’re all caught between that image of ourselves and our real self. But hell, if Cate Le Bon wrestled this too, then maybe there’s hope for us too.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Calculating Stars – Mary Robinette Kowal – “I wore the heat like/A hundred birthday cakes/Under one sun/I didn’t need anyone/On my own luck…”

“Kingdom of Love” – The Soft Boys

“You’ve been laying eggs under my skin/Now they’re hatching out under my chin/Now there’s tiny insects showing through/And all them tiny insects look like you!”

I was nearly going to word this part somewhere along the lines of “there’s enough good Robyn Hitchcock lyrics to fill a book,” but then I remembered that there is such a book (It’s called Somewhere Apart, if you’re interested. I highly recommend it), and “Kingdom of Love” was included in it. Dammit.

I listened to an episode of Life of the Record about Underwater Moonlight last week, so for all the die-hard Hitchcock-heads out there, here’s almost an hour and a half of Robyn Hitchcock detailing the story behind the album in great—and often hilarious—detail. He often talks about the album as the product of him being a rather confused young man in the music industry, but if I could come up with anything as good as the lyrics I pasted above, I’d be set for life. Hitchcock words a lot of the love-adjacent songs on this album as being akin to demonic possession, which…I’m sure there’s a lot to unpack there, but we got some great songs about it. And you know what? I’ve been listening to this song over and over for weeks as I’ve been trying to play it on guitar, and if that’s not demonic possession, I don’t know what is. (That riff at the end of the chorus is burned at the back of my brain. Still a work in progress.) “Kingdom of Love” evokes the frenzied urgency of punk and pairs it with lyrics that recall a ’50s B-movie about alien invasion, all in service of this twisted, grotesque vision of falling head over heels. Hitchcock’s yowled declaration of “all I want to do is be your creature!” at the end of the bridge cements what makes Underwater Moonlight so wonderful: a distillation of the brash punk sound of the late ’70s, but with a weirdo slant that was all Hitchcock and co.

..AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Someone You Can Build a Nest In – John Wiswell – “You’ve been laying eggs under my skin/Now they’re hatching out under my chin/Now there’s tiny insects showing through/And all them tiny insects look like you!”


“Words” – Missing Persons

Unfortunately, you’ve all come to me in a very ’80s time in my life. I think I’ve come full circle back to where I was in elementary school, when most of my music taste consisted of Duran Duran, Erasure, and Madonna, owing to my mom. I never stopped liking all of those bands, but I think I just happened to be at the epicenter of Gen Z being oversaturated with highly-curated ’80s nostalgia…the impact (derogatory) of Stranger Things. But new wave is just that good though. At its best, new wave was such a sharply bold genre, with its sleek sound but alternative spirit. For a song like “Words,” a repeated exorcism of frustrations of repeatedly going unheard, it’s the perfect medium—how can you go unheard when you’ve got a voice like Dale Bozzio? Her theatrical vocal presence makes this entire song, belting, squeaking, and murmuring through the various stages of her anger. It’s all a perfect specimen of new wave, and no amount of time that passes will make it any less wonderfully catchy.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

I Am the Ghost In Your House – Mar Romasco-Moore –
“I might as well go up and talk to a wall/’Cause all the words are having no effect at all/It’s a funny thing, am I all alone?”

“The Wedding Song” – David Bowie

I…

…okay, I get dangerously emotional every time I think about how much David Bowie and Iman loved each other. And still do. Shit, I need a minute, I’m on my period…just trust me on this one.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Bowie’s Bookshelf: The Hundred Books that Changed David Bowie’s Life – John O’Connell – you’ve been fooled, this is just a book recommendation that’s just even more book recommendations…either way, there’s some greats in here, and a peek behind the curtain of one of the most literary-minded rockstars in history.

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (6/9/26) – Queen of Faces

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I’ve seen a lot of buzz about Queen of Faces in the past few months, and it seemed intriguing. Plus, you know I’m always up for queer rep in my fantasy! So of course, I had to pick Queen of Faces up. (Unrelated, but I’ve had “Queen of Eyes” by The Soft Boys stuck in my head solely because of reading this book. New title for the sequel just dropped?) I’m glad to say that though it wasn’t perfect, Queen of Faces was a promising debut fantasy novel!

Enjoy this week’s review!

Queen of Faces – Petra Lord

Anabelle Gage is trapped in a body that isn’t hers—cheap, male, and rapidly deteriorating. Her only way to swap into a new, magical body is to be accepted into Paragon Academy, the most prestigious school in all of the Eight Oceans. After failing her entrance exams, Anabelle is certain that she’s doomed to die in the body she’s trapped in. One run-in with the law later, and she’s faced with Nicholas Carriwitch, Paragon’s renowned headmaster, who gives her a choice: be his right-hand mercenary, or die for her transgressions. Now entangled in a world of magic, crime, and mystery, Anabelle must decide if her choice was worth it—and how to get out of the body that she hates.

TW/CW: descriptions of injury, blood, suicide, violence, racism (fictional ethnicities/nationalities), war themes, dysphoria

In this day and age, it truly makes my heart sing to see queer voices flourishing in YA and middle grade voices flourish. I just had this lingering feeling that this is going to make so many trans teens so, so happy. This novel is so thematically strong; Ana’s journey was full of twists and turns, but it was so easy to sympathize with her and her continual struggle to find herself—not just in a new chassis (the magical bodies that can be swapped in this universe), but in terms of her identity. Lord includes a lot of motifs about transformation; there’s a recurring bit about caterpillars, butterflies, and metamorphosis that was, granted, a bit heavy-handed at the worst of times, but for a YA audience, was a lovely and poignant metaphor for both transness and general coming-of-age. Her journey is a perfect one for a YA audience, trans or not—her feelings of insecurity and unsureness about her identity and purpose are sure to deeply resonate with so many people.

Queen of Faces is billed as dark academia, but I’m not sure if it completely fits the label. We get some of that classic magical school format paired with the dark underbelly that Ana discovers, but most of the plot focuses on Ana’s time as a mercenary, and not necessarily Paragon Academy itself. That being said, it’s not necessarily an issue with the book—more just an issue with the marketing. Paragon Academy started to feel like an afterthought towards the end, and there were definitely some loose ends that could’ve been tied up with that plot. However, Ana’s mercenary plot was what drove the novel, and it was the most compelling part of the story for me. Lord has a knack for writing action sequences, and her tense atmosphere was flawlessly maintained for the whole novel. I loved how Ana and Wes played off of each other during this plot, and all of the friends-turned-foes (and vice versa) had excellent chemistry; Ana and Wes are shaping up to be the kind of enemies-to-lovers YA couple that I would’ve loved in high school. (However, the weird pseudo-love triangle going on was, yes, pretty YA, but it was so rushed and unfinished that I couldn’t even excuse it being YA. It was just…odd.) Beyond that, I loved how all of this coalesced into Ana’s character development, and her discovery of the truth of her mysterious job—and her superiors—was such a vital component to her eventually self-realization.

The worldbuilding in Queen of Faces was a mixed bag, but most of it was solid. Lord’s magic system was imaginative and well thought-out. I loved Lord’s visualizations of the branches forming, and I loved all of the consequences of how magic affected Caimor and the rest of the world. I also think the history of Caimor and the Eight Oceans was explained nicely, and without any unwieldy info-dumps. The system of the chassises and body-swapping was well-done as well, and served as a cogent commentary on class inequality. However, some of the other aspects of the worldbuilding were slightly shaky. I had a vague sense of the technology level—I assumed closer to the 1920’s given the presence of cars and radios, but not much more advanced than that, but I didn’t get a good sense of it. Lord also regularly inserted the fact that Ana loves romance manga, which felt jarring and out of place in this otherwise fantastical setting. I had the same issue with the fact that there’s something called the “Babel Curse,” which would imply the existence of Christianity/the Bible in this otherwise completely fantasy universe. Small issues, sure, but they took me out of the narrative with how much they were mentioned. But for a debut novel’s stab at worldbuilding, it’s a good start.

Queen of Faces unfortunately suffered from some pacing issues. The first third or so was paced reasonably well, and I had a good sense for how the events of the novel had progressed. However, once Anabelle gets to Paragon Academy, there’s time-skipping all over the place; my irrational hatred for random timeskips is just that—irrational—but Lord often didn’t let the reader know that these timeskips had even happened until the last relevant minute. I fully thought that only days had passed by, and boom…it’s been a month? The pacing was just so uneven that it was difficult to get my footing in places, which took me out of the main narrative, especially in the first half of the novel. Given the fact that we’ve mostly left Paragon Academy behind by the second half of the novel, it didn’t help that the pacing also left so many loose threads unresolved. Things evened out towards the end, but it never fully recovered from the topsy-turvy pacing at the beginning.

All in all, a daring and mysterious debut full of dark magic, shifting alliances, and conspiracies. 3.75 stars!

Queen of Faces is Petra Lord’s debut novel and the first book in the Queen of Faces series; its followup, King of Masks, is slated for release in 2027.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 6/7/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: happy pride from Damon Albarn, Queen Latifah, and Meg Duffy. Honorable mention to Brian Eno, whose outfits in the early ’70s slayed so hard that he deserves to be an honorary member of the LGBTQ+ community.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 6/7/26

“Battle” – Blur

In addition to healing my 12-year-old self, I have begun healing my 18-year-old self…by getting a painfully spendy copy of 13 from my local record store. These damn European imports!! Hey, I had a bit of extra money from graduation…I swear to god that vinyl had been speaking to me like the Green Goblin mask every time I went inside. It had to happen eventually.

Of course, I knew it was going to be worth every penny—13 is still in my top 10 albums of all time. This was the first time I’ve listened to it all the way through in years (I played it to death in my senior year of high school), and it’s one of those records that I wish I could erase my memory of and re-experience listening to it for the first time. I seriously can’t imagine how much of a shock to the system it must’ve been to Blur fans in 1999; Even after their self-titled album—a bitter plunge into grunge after their burnout from Britpop fame—13 was truly nothing like what they’d previously done. One of the reasons it sticks out so much to me is how uninhibited they all feel. The harmony of Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James, and Dave Rowntree continued to be as neat as a pin, but all four of them were bent on going into the most daring, experimental territory that the band had ever reached. By all accounts, all of them were…pretty miserable, unfortunately—a lot of 13 deals with the breakup between Albarn and his longtime girlfriend, Justine Frischmann, and tensions with Graham Coxon would lead him to leave the band a year later. Some of the stylistic deviations feel like middle fingers, like the jarring transition from the plaintive, heart-pouring “Tender” to the jagged howling of “Bugman.” You can’t tell me that wasn’t deliberate trolling on the band’s part. Yet even if it came from a burned out place, the experimental rebellion on this album left an undeniably positive mark on Blur’s legacy as a band.

“Battle” remains one of the more surprising tracks on the album. Clocking in at nearly eight minutes long, it’s the longest song on the album, but only by a single second—”Tender,” my favorite song from the album (and maybe of all time), is 7:41 long, while “Battle” squeezes past at 7:42. Like many of the unexpected twists and turns on the album, those tracks couldn’t be more different. The lyrics are pretty spare—the focus is on the sprawling, very sci-fi soundscape that unfolds over this song’s long runtime. What begins with a riff of dainty, spacey synth notes unfolds into an echoing, forming-and-reforming galaxy of sound. It really feels like you’ve been jettisoned into space at breakneck speed, watching the stars speed past. The deep rumble of Coxon’s guitar churns as Albarn’s voice, tweaked into oblivion with all manner of effects, seems to dissipate in real time. It seriously boggles my mind that this hasn’t been used in a big-budget sci-fi movie to soundtrack a tense dogfight in space. It’s eons away from the much more grounded, British social commentary that was their claim to fame in the mid-’90s, but that’s what makes it last to me. 13 was Blur breaking open the confines that the music industry had imposed on them, and “Battle” feels like all of that pent-up energy spiraling outwards into the potential that had always been incubating within them.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Ancestral Night – Elizabeth Bear – the perfect soundtrack for an adventure aboard a mysterious spaceship that encounters its fair share of borderline eldritch beings.

“Born Under a Bad Sign” – Richard Hawley

I might as well admit now that I’ve been leeching off my brother and his girlfriend, who have been going through the 1,001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die list. That’s also how I got “Crosseyed and Painless” last month, although that was bound to happen eventually. Coles Corner, on the other hand, might’ve passed me by completely, even with my Britpop proclivities (he was a founding member of Longpigs and was a touring and session for Pulp for a time).

I only got a handful of songs from Coles Corner from my brother (he said some of them “got too Sinatra,” which makes perfect sense, honestly), but they’re all packages of British rock tracks that seem plucked from yesteryear. “The Ocean” was almost my pick this week, with its staggering, cinematic build, but I just keep returning to “Born Under a Bad Sign.” It’s a small wonder that this hasn’t been in a Wes Anderson movie, and not just because of their mutual connections with Jarvis Cocker—this seems like the exact kind of ’60s-inflected, slow ballad that would soundtrack Léa Seydoux wistfully smoking out the window, or something. The comfort that comes from “Born Under a Bad Sign” isn’t necessarily from the nostalgic air of it all. It just has this innate, warm texture, created by Hawley’s smooth vocals, that evokes being carefree and sprawled out in bed, fresh cups of rich coffee and day fading into night as you shut your eyes.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Cybernetic Tea Shop – Meredith Katz – “Now you’re laying in the afterglow/And there’s something that she wants to know/Are you going be the one to say/You belong to me…”

“U.N.I.T.Y.” – Queen Latifah

Look, I’m not saying that this generation doesn’t have its fair share of fantastic, feminist artists—rappers in particular—but I maintain that some of these gen alpha/gen z boys and men have gotten too bold…they need to have the fear of Queen Latifah telling them “WHO YOU CALLIN’ A BITCH?” put in them, is all I’m saying.

God. So good. It’s so easy to see why “U.N.I.T.Y.” has become such an enduring classic for a myriad of reasons—its significance in a very male-dominated hip hop scene, it’s genuinely feminist message (no hollow girlboss anthems here), and the fact that it’s just so smooth and catchy. And I think the reason that it resonates to this day is because it calls attention to all of the ways that misogyny has infected society. It reminds me in structure of Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)” in that it presents its initial issue, and in subsequent verses declares: “oh, you thought I was done? Nope, sit back down, we’re deconstructing misogynoir from the top down.” From offhand catcalling to domestic violence, “U.N.I.T.Y.” pulls the curtain on just how deep misogyny runs in society.

And it also resonates because nothing that Queen Latifah talks about here has gone away. Just as it was in 1993, women—especially women of color—are subject to the worst of society’s misogynist tendencies. The domestic violence remains. The objectification, name-calling, and slurs remain. Neoliberal feminism would have you believe that since women (occasionally women of color) can become CEOs and whatnot that misogyny has been solved. One look at the world at large would tell you the exact opposite. A queer, Black woman publicly calling out this in the 1990’s was a vital wake-up call, and it remains so to this day, 33 years later, in an age of widespread misogyny. There hasn’t been a time since “U.N.I.T.Y.” was released where it hasn’t been relevant. Plus, it’s just catchy. I’m warming up to saxophone samples here. Every element of this song is incredible.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

She Who Knows – Nnedi Okorafor – a story of strength, resilience, and one girl’s journey across the desert.

“Spinning Away” – Brian Eno and John Cale

You thought you could let your guard down again? Boom, get Eno’d, fuckers.

Like 13, Wrong Way Up has also been speaking to me like the Green Goblin mask whenever I go to my local record store, but not necessarily for the same reason. It’s way more reasonably priced, but I don’t want to buy it until I’ve actually listened to the album, y’know? But it’s Eno! And John Cale! “Spinning Away” keeps pushing me towards listening to it, and it’s convinced me that maybe warm weather is the perfect time to listen to it. Despite Eno and Cale purportedly wanting to kill each other while recording this album, both songs I’ve heard from Wrong Way Up (the other being “Lay My Love”) are nothing short of harmonious and enchanting. “Spinning Away” is also mostly Eno at the wheel; like “Lay My Love,” it has a circular, cyclical kind of groove that feeds into itself. The song seems to describe the process of making art—here, it’s an artist painting the sky, and it even references perhaps the most iconic painting of the sky of all time, Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” The opening has to be some of Eno’s most evocative lyricism, and for him, that’s really saying something:

“Up on a hill/As the day dissolves/With my pencil turning moments into line/High above/In the violet sky/A silent silver plane/It draws a golden chain…”

How can you not picture such a vivid scene after hearing that? And every successive line creates such a vibrant image. I always picture those time-lapses of galaxies colliding once this song really kicks in. It’s so transportive. Describing stars as a “million-insect storm” might be one of my favorite ways space has been described in song. It’s an almost dreamlike narrative of both the painting and the landscape morphing (spinning away, even) as they scramble to capture the image. There’s an air of impermanence about “Spinning Away,” but the way Eno and Cale paint it feels nothing short of euphoric, with Eno’s wonderstruck vocals and Cale’s soaring strings. To me, it feels like a take on impermanence as a positive experience—it’s important to capture these fleeting moments in life, and it’s a privilege to see the world changing before you, even in the most minute sense.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Last Gifts of the Universe – Riley August – “One by one/All the stars appear/As the great winds of the planet spiral in/Spinning away/Like the night sky at Arles/In the million insect storm/The constellations form…”

“Aquamarine” – Hand Habits

I discovered this song unexpectedly after watching Fruit Bats’ episode of What’s In My Bag? recently. It immediately cemented itself into one of my hypothetical playlists that only exists in my mind…that being “songs that seem engineered in a lab to be featured in Netflix’s Heartstopper.” It’s that very specific, indie-pop, reverbed synth sound that makes that connection work for me. Those synths! “Aquamarine” skitters along with all manner of them, creating a controlled frenzy that darts all over the place. Brief guitar interludes make you feel jolted back to reality after waking up from a vivid dream before Duffy plunges you headfirst back into the sleepless, electronic dreamworld—fitting for a song with lyrics unsure of their direction in the wake of emotional devastation. It’s such a lush track, bottling the feeling of breaking into a run and never looking back.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester – Maya MacGregor – “Why can’t you talk about it?/I got used to being on the other side of truth/Now I never ask for details/Who the hell needs details?/When everything is burning/You light a fire on the grave…”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Books

🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈The Bookish Mutant’s Books for Pride Month (2026 Edition)🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Thursday, bibliophiles!

Here in the U.S., June is Pride Month! You know the drill. I hate how bittersweet these posts are, and the bitter keeps growing. I see the beauty of this month and our queer community, but I can’t help but shrivel from the reminders that there have been repeated attempts to take queer books off the shelves across the country, and that the trans community here in the states has been under attack more than ever. My heart truly, truly hurts for all of us. I hurt. Of course, here I am, being cisgender in my cushy blue state with an openly gay governor, but nonetheless, I hurt whenever any other member of the queer community is hurt.

I’ve been an out and proud bisexual for almost eight years. Not long, in the grand scheme of things, but these years have taught me so much about queer people and the LGBTQ+ community. If there’s anything that I see in us, it’s our tenacity. No matter the slew of hateful legislation and rhetoric, we always come back stronger than ever. If there’s anything that the queer community doesn’t do, it’s back down in the face of a threat. In spite of the never-ending threats from outside and inside (the infighting never stops, y’all need to be normal about each other, please), we are like dandelions pushing through the cracks in the pavement: we never surrender, and we continue to bloom in the face of adversity.

But here’s the thing. I don’t like having to be this resilient. I don’t think any of us do. But if there’s anything to take solace in, it’s that our community is so strong and diverse that there will always be someone fighting. Yes, we all have to do what we must, but it’s important to remember that simply surviving, just being, is resistance in the face of the government wanting the public to believe that we aren’t worthy of the same rights as everybody else and that our stories are not fit for public consumption. You don’t have to be out and proud. All you have to do is be.

So here’s my annual pride month recommendations list of queer books from a variety of genres and backgrounds. I’ve compiled all kinds of books from various sexual orientations and gender identities, as well as backgrounds (queer people of color, disabled queer people, queer immigrants, etc.). Hopefully there’s something for everyone. (As always, if I’ve mistakenly identified anything on this list, please let me know! I’m only human.)

Now, more than ever, it’s crucial to support the LGBTQ+ community (especially the trans community, who are under attack more than ever) in whatever way you can. If you want to show your support them monetarily, here are some great organizations to donate to:

This is a non-exhaustive list, and I encourage you to seek out organizations in your area! There are so many wonderful people across the country (and the world) doing great work for the LGBTQ+ community.

A refresher on my key:

MC: Main character

LI: Love interest

SC: Side character(s)

For my posts from previous years, click below: 

Let’s begin, shall we? 

🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈THE BOOKISH MUTANT’S BOOKS FOR PRIDE MONTH (2025 EDITION)🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

FANTASY:

SCIENCE FICTION:

REALISTIC/HISTORICAL FICTION:

*it’s worth noting that the main character of this novella is a mountain lion, but I feel like it still counts.

**the cover for The Golden Boy’s Guide to Bipolar has not yet been updated to reflect Sonido Reyes’s name change.

ANTHOLOGIES (VARIOUS GENRES):

NONFICTION:

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and if so, what did you think of them? What are some of your favorite queer books that you’ve read recently? Let me know in the comments!

Today’s song:

That’s it for this recommendations post! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in ARC Reviews, Book Review Tuesday

ARC Review: Mother & Slaughter

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Whew, this header’s been gathering some serious dust. I don’t do ARCs regularly anymore, but basically consider this my regular Book Review Tuesday installment…just with some more intrigue, since this book is less than a month away from release!

As I said before, I’ve gotten too busy to regularly review ARCs in the past few years, but this is an exception. The author of this upcoming novel (Liz Shipton) came across my blog and personally reached out to ask if I could review their ARC, so I said yes! Sadly, it pains me to say that this satirical fantasy was kind a miss.

Enjoy this week’s ARC review!

Mother & Slaughter – Liz Shipton

150 years ago, all of Draconia’s women were stripped of their magic. Now, their only options once they turn eighteen are to become mothers or gladiators. Eleanor Skinner was content to choose the latter, and has spent her days fighting her way to the top. At 35, she’s Draconia’s oldest gladiator, and proud to claim the title. But when she becomes pregnant after a one-night stand, her options are slim. Rumors have swirled about Draconia’s only magic-practicing woman left, who might be able to give her the abortion she’ll need. But Draconia is full of patriarchal monsters, and Eleanor will have to claw her way to freedom.

TW/CW: misogyny, violence, gore, blood, abortion themes, sexual content, racism, transphobia, xenophobia/anti-immigrant rhetoric, homophobia, ableism (internalized/external), animal death

Thank you to Liz Shipton for sending me this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Giving an ARC a low rating is always tough. It’s especially tough since Liz Shipton was nice enough to reach out to me personally and give me this ARC, which I really appreciate. But with every ARC, I promise an honest review, and an honest review is what this is. I really wanted to like Mother & Slaughter, but it tripped over itself too many times to be truly successful.

If you’re going into Mother & Slaughter thinking that it’ll be subtle satire…it’s not. And honestly? That’s okay. There’s a place for both kinds of political allegory in this literary ecosystem. Mother & Slaughter is a revenge fantasy about tearing down the Trump administration, which I am 100% behind. Unfortunately, while I’m 100% behind Shipton’s politics, the delivery was not my cup of tea. This book basically feels like if we lived in a better, kinder universe where Quentin Tarantino was somehow woke. (For what it’s worth, I think Mother & Slaughter is the perfect book for anybody who was brutally grossed out by The Bride’s speech about “motherhood” at the end of Kill Bill: Volume 2. If Kill Bill: Volume 2 has no haters, then I am no longer here.) It’s a very bloody and irreverent novel, and it definitely tested my squeamishness for gore. The chemistry and banter between the characters was good, but it just wasn’t my kind of humor. There’s no shortage of swearing—we’re talking at least 5 f-bombs per page here, so that’s what you’re getting into. My issues with this aspect in particular are purely personal and not about the craft—it was written decently enough, but it just wasn’t the book for me in this regard.

Mother & Slaughter tackles almost everything you could think of that’s wrong with the Trump administration; misogyny and womanhood take center stage, but there’s also lots of discussions of homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, racism, and the persecution of scientists and scholars. I think the depictions of misogyny and the struggles women have under this administration were well done and well-realized through Eleanor’s character. There was some nice disability inclusion with Eleanor and Roz, who both had sustained permanent injuries from being gladiators. I also liked how respectfully Sam (who is a trans woman) was handled as a character; Eleanor and Roz butt heads about how to treat her, but ultimately, they both come to respect her as her true self—and as a victim of the same patriarchal system that they’ve been fighting against. There’s some timely discussions about immigration and anti-immigrant rhetoric which was solidly done. Shipton also attempts to tackle racism through the character of Roz; I will say, although her character gained more depth later, my biggest complaint is that for the first half of the book, Roz felt like she was only there to teach Eleanor that racism existed. This was remedied later, but it’s still worth mentioning as a writing flaw. Additionally, I’m not sure if the racism commentary was done well, as we never really get any context for how racism is systemic in Draconia (as misogyny/transphobia/etc. are), and there’s only some offhanded comments about how women of color are oversexualized and discriminated against without factoring it into how the government oppresses people of color in Draconia.

Politics take center stage in Mother & Slaughter, which is as it should be. I’m not asking for this novel to be some masterfully-crafted, intricate world, because first and foremost, it’s a political satire. That being said, I think it would’ve been much more effective if there was more effort put into the worldbuilding. It’s basically your run-of-the-mill, vaguely medieval European fantasy setting, but with more anachronistic language and dialogue. (I kind of expected the anachronisms given that this book’s tagline is “Slay, girl,” but it’s worth noting.) Yet aside from the government’s strict control of women and immigrants, I really couldn’t tell you how the government works. In order for this kind of satire to work, there needs to be at least some scaffolding of the world in order for us to understand our own politics through the lens of a fantasy world. The real fun of satire in genre fiction is to warp our own reality into a fictional one, and in this case, it just felt like a cheap copy-and-paste of current U.S. politics onto a hastily thought-out fantasy world. Fiction holds a mirror to parts of our world, but it’s really not much fun if the mirror is indistinguishable from the real world itself.

This issue is exacerbated in the ending, in which we finally meet Draconia’s Trump stand-in, who is…blatantly just Trump poorly photoshopped into a fantasy world. Like I said, the real fun of ridiculing horrible demagogues like him is by warping them to fit a fantasy setting. Once again, I recognize that this book wasn’t meant to be subtle, but a lack of subtlety shouldn’t mean a lack of creativity. Reknaw says “yuge,” he calls the main characters “nasty women,” and he even mentions a “big, beautiful bill.” As much as I loathe the man, it just felt so lazy and cheap to have no effort whatsoever put into this Trump parody. This is an exceedingly niche reference here, but remember Hellboy: Blood and Iron? They have their stand-in, comically evil oligarch character (Oliver Trombolt) whose name is just multiple real-life oligarchs (Trump being one of them) mashed up, but at least he didn’t look like a clone of Trump (or any of his other inspirations)! the bar’s real low. Even the artwork looks exactly like him. It…gets to a point. Well-intentioned satire, once again, but it just felt so unoriginal when there’s a myriad of ways to critique this administration and the scumbags within it.

Overall, a satirical fantasy with good intentions but a bloody mess of an execution. 2 stars.

Release date: July 1st, 2026

Mother & Slaughter is a standalone, and will be released on July 1st, 2026. Liz Shipton is also the author of Dot Slash Magic, the Thalassic series (Salt, Sand, Soul, Paz, and Passage), and several other books for teens and adults.

Today’s song:

yes, I know this song has one of the most threatening auras of any Brian Eno track, but I just CANNOT STOP LISTENING TO IT god I love this album

That’s it for this week’s ARC Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs – 5/31/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

BEFORE I GET INTO IT: my longtime best friend has joined me in creating a book blog! It’s over on Wix, but it’s well worth migrating to another website to see her excellent book reviews. Go show Daisy’s Fables some love!!

This week: this one really feels like I’m a 12-year-old holding up my interests and talking at you about them, but that’s what blogs are for, right?

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 5/31/26

“Huey Newton” – St. Vincent

Sit down. I’m yapping about St. Vincent’s self-titled album again. You WILL listen. You subscribed to this blog, this is the price you pay…

I really haven’t changed since the age of 12, huh? It really makes pieces of my soul wither to see companies running with the joking “your inner child needs a little treat” expressions and turning the healing experience of becoming one with your inner child corporate. No, your inner child doesn’t need the new Starbucks drink, or whatever. That being said, preordering the 10th anniversary pressing of St. Vincent’s self-titled album was for me, but also my inner 12-year-old. As I sat there listening to it, I could feel her curled up inside of me like a chrysalis. I feel like I’m slowly becoming everything she wanted me to be.

But present me reveres St. Vincent as much as 12-year-old me did. Now that I’m older, it’s become one of those puzzle boxes of albums with new layers that reveal themselves every time you listen to it. (And that’s saying something, because I listened to it a concerning amount in middle school.) For me, this listen made me realize that this album is musically and thematically sound. There isn’t as much of a narrative to it as some of St. Vincent’s other albums, but throughout the many modern anxieties that she dishes out, there’s this through line of life being swallowed by the Internet; it’s meant to be more of a near-future thing, if her cult leader persona is anything to go by, but it rang true in 2014—and today. Clark wrote “Huey Newton” as a loose stream of consciousness song; the reference to the Black Panther Huey Newton is only relevant because of a vivid dream she’d had about him after taking a high dose of Ambien. For Clark, the lyrics are “tied to the next in a way that I don’t even understand…It has the feel of an extended Google search, and is set in the near future, after a long winter.” It is kind of a sonic doomscroll in the way that it pinballs from one disconnected image to the next. But you can see the intention of the artifice of the Internet that comes through in some of these images; “Fake knife, real catcher,” or “fuckless pawn sharks” evoke the ease of which people construct their identities even though there’s nothing behind the curtain. 12 years later, her image of a lawless internet populated by fakers and criminals has become even realer, with the blight of AI polluting what was already polluted in the first place. (For the record, I’m taking the line “Cowboys of Information” as the name for my purely hypothetical St. Vincent cover band.)

“Entombed in a shrine/Of zeroes and ones” remains one of the hardest lines on the album, if only in delivery alone. “Huey Newton” switches from a more restrained, dreamy piece of indie synth-pop before launching a salvo of guitar shrapnel in your face at the 2:37 mark. Every line is spit as her signature guitars dissolve into glitch-like fuzz. It all sounds distinctly pixelated, aggressive in its assault, as though the false veil of the digital world is being torn apart by a virus before your eyes. The beauty of St. Vincent to me is that the layers on “Huey Newton” are present on every song—everything has digitized tree rings hewn into it, every one revealing something about the vibrant tapestry of this album’s dystopian, digital world.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Machinehood – S.B. Divya – “Entombed in a shrine of zeros and ones, you know/You know/Oh, with fatherless features/You motherless creatures/You know…”

“Greta” – Cate Le Bon

Cate! Le Bon! Cannot! Make! A! Bad! Album!

Genuinely baffling how one person can be this talented. Sure, there are weaker spots in her catalogue, but I don’t think there’s such a thing as a bad Cate Le Bon song. I’ve just listened to CYRK, her second album, and it’s just as inventive as some of her later work, though quite different in sound. Before she crafted atmospheres from saxophones and synths, she had a more traditionally indie rock sound, but not without the unique lyrical and vocal touches that she’s always carried. CYRK as a whole is playful (fitting for an album named for the Polish word for “circus”), an adventurous branching-out into whatever struck Le Bon’s fancy. In spirit, it reminds me a lot of Björk’s early work, where she was just putting out feelers wherever she wanted, with only the intention to make daring music.

“Playful” doesn’t exactly describe “Greta” though. It’s one of the slower, more contemplative songs on the album; aside from the vaguely trumpet detour at the end, most of it relies on muted guitar and bass. For that reason, it came out of nowhere for me. What also came out of nowhere was how emotionally moving this track is; Le Bon softly sings of a subject with “eyes the size of lagoons/Dreaming wild” and whose baby days are “coiled up inside her like ribbons all tied.” It feels like she took a telescope and looked down at me as a child, my eyes turned skyward. There’s something about it that feels like a comforting lullaby, from the references to a child born in the stars to the slow rhythm, fit for gently rocking a cradle back and forth. It feels like an ode to every weird child who refused to let the weirdness get beaten out of them, no matter how hard the world tried. If I’d heard this as a kid, I feel like I would’ve found infinite solace in it, but now that I’m hearing it as an adult, it feels like a potent reminder to keep the child alive, to not let the ribbons of baby days get tangled or forgotten, and to remember that all of us are made of star stuff.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Beautyland – Marie-Helene Bertino – “Observatories clocked you in the stars/They were holding you so dear/Greta, be good to yourself/You’ve always been here.”

“I Might” – Wilco

The Whole Love does not get the love it deserves. Fully acknowledging that I have a fog of nostalgia surrounding my head whenever I talk about this album, this album is severely underrated. I think the problem with Wilco’s discography is that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is such an obvious, career-defining best that it overshadows so much of the adventurous work that they’ve made in the decades since. And if we’re talking about adventurous, then we need to talk about The Whole Love, an unexpected buffet of Wilco’s classic alt-rock sound and explorations out into both the electronic and folk worlds. “Art of Almost” and “Sunloathe” really shouldn’t be on the same album in theory, but The Whole Love makes it happen.

This album was the first Wilco release I remember being…well, conscious for. I was in elementary school when it came out; I specifically remember my dad playing the album all the way through while driving to work and watching the Popeye crossover music video for “Dawned On Me” at the old studio where I took piano lessons. So even before I went through the whole album on my own, I’d already listened to the whole thing. “I Might” was one of the many songs on the album that remained in a nameless limbo in my memory as A Wilco Song That Certainly Exists, but I couldn’t put it to a concrete song. It sounds like your average Wilco song from the 2010’s, with its driving rock sound and cheery organs, but even though it’s not as full-throttle weird as “Art of Almost” (which comes right before it on the album…talk about whiiiiplaaaaash), it has the spirit of “let’s try everything, what’s the worst that could happen?” Jeff Tweedy’s lyrics are nonsensical and free-association (“Your sno-cone/And it’s piss and blood,” anyone?) and the chorus of “You won’t set the kids on fire/Oh, but I might” is…wild, obviously, but the more I listen to it, the more it feels like it’s a defiant statement of turning his past work—and people’s expectations of the band—upside down and destroying them. The Whole Love came out of its ashes, and to me, it’s still one of the most daring albums in their catalogue.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Obake Code – Makana Yamamoto – “It’s in the cards, oh oh/’Get Well Soon – everybody’/Do all lies have a taste?/Let it go, I don’t know, oh…”

“Advice & Vices” – Chelsea Wolfe

I’d forgotten about “Advice & Vices” since…at least high school, around the time I had my Chelsea Wolfe awakening proper and listened to The Grime and the Glow, her first album. Hearing a song like this brings up so many contradictions—I love it, but I simultaneously feel like it’s slightly distant from the music she’d become known for, and yet it feels so innately Chelsea Wolfe. It’s always been goth, but it’s not cloaked in quite the same foreboding atmosphere as much of her later work. The album is much more lo-fi, and yet you can already see the seeds of her signature style germinating; “Advice & Vices” feels like a more understated indie rock song, until you hear Wolfe’s muted ghostlike howls recorded at the very end of the song. Her voice is already strong here, and it’d only get stronger. But it’s like watching Wolfe fish in a frozen lake for what would become her sound; the ice is melting, and around it is what would become the iconic artist that I love today. She was always that good.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The King Must Die – Kemi Ashing-Giwa – “I never listen to my own best advice, no/Like one thing leads to another/Like one heart bleeds for another/And everybody wants what they can’t have…”

“New Muscles” – mary in the junkyard

The cynical part of me is starting to think that mary in the junkyard (or their management) might’ve just been too good at picking singles. But the more optimistic part of me is starting to think that Role Model Hermit is going to be such a fun album. We’re at three singles now ahead of the album’s July release, and each one has been so different from the other—this is pretty much worlds apart from “Candelabra.” It’s also a very different song than I’ve expected from mary in the junkyard, and…I love it.

“New Muscles” is such an uplifting, confidence-boosting song. But from the more gloomy instrumentation, full of strings and percussion that sounds like somebody’s whacking a plastic bucket with a spoon, you wouldn’t think it. Yet it’s the perfect song for dusting yourself off and getting back on your feet. It’s all about emerging from a cocoon and embracing all of the possibilities of your new, stronger, and more healed self: “I’ve been getting up and getting out/Working out and working on myself/New muscles all over my back/New muscles all over my back.” It feels like the spiritual successor to Wilco’s “Kicking Television” in terms of empowering indie rock songs about self-improvement that totally avoid sounding corny. It has a playful element to it (“I will take you down with one finger”), but it balances the joking “they’ll never see the new me coming” attitude with a genuine, sparkling hope for the wonderful things that’ll happen once you start exercising these new muscles and putting that healing self to work. “New Muscles” came out at a very advantageous time in my life—I’ve been feeling some version of this song for a while, what with trying to claw my way out of a multitude of bad habits and becoming more independent in my life. It really does feel like emerging from a chrysalis, even though I know that I’ll probably be emerging from a number of chrysalises over the course of my life. For now, I’m taking this new self to better places. Here’s to flexing your new muscles.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Juliet Takes a Breath – Gabby Rivera – “Courage in my bones/I embrace the thunder and the lightning/I will make it so hard to forget me…”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (5/26/26) – The Killing Spell

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

As I’ve been doing my AAPI books focus during AAPI Heritage Month over the years, I noticed that I’ve unintentionally neglected the PI part of the acronym, which is a real shame. Unfortunately, as with a lot of marginalized groups, it’s difficult to find books—especially genre fiction—by marginalized authors; in fact, The Killing Spell is billed as the first traditionally published adult fantasy by a Native Hawaiian author, which…insert the “disappointed, but not surprised” meme. It took until 2026 for this to happen? Christ.

Anyways, I was intrigued by that, and by the urban fantasy premise. In the end, The Killing Spell was a fun and ambitious fantasy debut.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Killing Spell – Shay Kauwe

200 years ago, a flood of unforeseen proportions changed the world forever. The Hawaiian Islands were submerged in the ocean, and the survivors found refuge on the coast of California. Kea Petrova lives in this Hawaiian Homestead in what remains of Los Angeles, honing her language-based magic. Discriminated against by the powers that be—both because of her heritage and her magic—she tries to keep her head down. But when a powerful politician is murdered by a killing spell connected to the Hawaiian language, Kea has a target on her back. Desperate to prove her innocence, she teams up with a corrupt politician to clear her name. But what they’ll uncover may shake the magical world of L.A. to its very foundations…

TW/CW: murder, violence, sexual harassment, racism, colonialism/imperialism themes

The Killing Spell is a great debut, but what stands out about it is that I can just feel how much fun Shay Kauwe had while writing it. Though it wasn’t without its flaws, I could feel that same sense of fun and adventure on every page of this novel. I guarantee that you’ll have a blast reading it!

The characters in The Killing Spell are also a standout for sure. Kea was such a compelling main character; she has that perfect combination of being flawed enough to seem real but likable enough to root for. She’s headstrong and stubborn more often than not (to be fair, it’s justified half the time), but she’s so determined and witty that it almost makes up for it. She had the perfect combination of traits to make all of her adventures instantly worth following. The other characters were differing degrees of fun and campy, which suited the classic murder mystery atmosphere. The only character that I didn’t like as much was Sora. He was a little too cliched for my liking, and as much as I love a good enemies-to-lovers arc, Kea and Sora lacked romantic chemistry to me. The romance subplot was just forced in general—thinking back to the story as a whole, it really didn’t enhance anything about it. But he’s the exception to the rule—Shay Kauwe’s characters were a joy to follow.

Despite The Killing Spell being set 200 years in the future, it checked off all of the boxes for a fun murder mystery. I think I just like genre fiction-mystery/thriller melds in general—they just present so many fun opportunities to use worldbuilding to make a compelling world and explain the structures of it by showing you what it means for things to go wrong. There’s so much here for the diehard fantasy fans, but I think if you’re a mystery reader who wants to get into fantasy, you should absolutely pick up The Killing Spell. The setting is modern enough for a lot of the classic murder mystery beats to happen, and with the right balance of seriousness and camp; you’ve got your mysterious poisonings, unlikely detective teams, and seducing people for clues in a dance hall, all wrapped up in a futuristic fantasy package. What was clear to me was that The Killing Spell was Kauwe’s love letter to both genres, and that passion was evident with every successive page.

Language-based magic was already a fascinating magic system for Shay Kauwe to explore, but it bolsters the novel’s themes, which were one of The Killing Spell‘s biggest strengths. Many of the characters (most prominently Kea) are Native Hawaiian, and there is so much discussion about sovereignty and land ownership, as well as the preservation of Indigenous cultures. But I think the language magic and the discussions of the “legitimacy” of languages was the strongest theme in the novel. Through this magic system, Kauwe starts some very cogent discussions about what languages that people and governments deems “important” in its often Eurocentric view, and the bias against languages that don’t have as many speakers; there’s also lots of very potent discussions about cultural pride and how it can be an act of resistance when the dominant, hegemonic cultures are bent on deeming it “lesser.” Kauwe’s pride in Native Hawaiian culture shone through in The Killing Spell, and from an outside perspective, I think these kinds of perspectives are so vital to fantasy as a genre.

Most of the elements above would’ve added up to a solid four stars for me. I had some minor nitpicks, but most of them aren’t very relevant. What is relevant, however, is the worldbuilding, which left a lot to be desired. Aside from the language-based magic, which was well-thought out and thematically strong, the worldbuilding got messy. The whole impetus for the emergence of magic was this cataclysmic flood, which somehow released this language magic into the world. How this happened just…isn’t explained. At all. There was a flood, the Hawaiian Islands sunk, and…magic appeared? I guess? And The Killing Spell happens 200 years after said flood. You’d think that there would be some sort of major societal change, right? Other than the vague system of magical mobs that rule L.A., we get no explanation as to how the world reorganized itself or how magic changed society at large. This is supposed to be 200 years in the future, but nothing would’ve changed if this was just an urban fantasy set today. Other than the Hawaiian Homestead plot, we don’t get any real consequences of how the world changed after the flood. And locations outside of America get mentioned, but what the hell happened to them? Come to think of it, what’s going on in America outside of L.A.? Ultimately, the foundation was there, but Kauwe didn’t expand on it nearly enough for the worldbuilding to actually hold water.

All in all, an action-packed debut rife with magic, mystery, and intrigue. 3.75 stars!

The Killing Spell is Shay Kauwe’s debut novel, and a standalone.

Today’s song:

ANOTHER BANGER CATE LE BON ALBUM IN THE BOOKS! cyrk is excellent, and this song makes me emotional out of nowhere…

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!