Author: madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

book blogger, aspiring author, music nerd, comics fan, stargazer. ☆ she/her ☆ ISFJ ☆ bisexual ☆ spd ☆ art: @spacefacedraws
Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (9/10/24) – The Sun and the Void

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Looks like I’m back! I’ve returned to college, and, as it always does, it has taken me some time to settle in. My ducks aren’t fully in a row, but they’re straightened enough that I’ve figured out when and where I’ll have times to squeeze in some writing. Key word is some: chances are I’ll stick to the two posts a week for a while now that I’ve got lots of schoolwork on my hands.

For this week’s Book Review Tuesday, I have a book that it’s almost miraculous that I liked as much as I did; at their worst, overly long epic fantasy novels are the bane of my existence. The Sun and the Void clocks in at nearly 600 pages, and I expected at least some of it to be a slog. Lo and behold, this novel held so much more in store—vibrant characters, Venezuelan-inspired mythology, and a daring quest across an inhospitable land.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Sun and the Void (The Warring Gods, #1) – Gabriela Romero Lacruz

Reina has lived her life on the outskirts of society. Though her kind, the nozariels, have won their freedom, her tail and features mark her as an outcast. Reina returns to her estranged grandmother in dire need of healing—and answers. Now kept alive by means of dark, unpredictable magic, she is now the owner of a terrible secret: her grandmother is in league with a demon-god hungry for sacrifices, and one such sacrifice may be someone that she holds dear.

On the other side of the kingdom, Eva struggles to hide her true self. Her mixed heritage—part human, part valco—makes her a target. Soon after she is set to be married off to a man she barely knows, she falls in with a revolutionary. But this charming, volatile man has a darker side, a hunger for power that will not spare her if she stands in the way.

The paths of these women intersect as the clock ticks, and the fate of both of their worlds may hang in the balance…

TW/CW (from the author): alcohol, assault, blood, child death, childbirth, death, demons, emotional abuse, gore, infertility, kidnapping, pregnancy, racism, religion, sexually explicit scenes, mentions of slavery, violence

Ever since my tastes started drifting more into adult novels, I’ve had a history of getting a hundreds or so pages into an epic fantasy novel, losing my way, and coming out with only the vaguest sense of plot and one character. There’s some of it that’s on me, but it’s often a case of rambling; I’ve found many such novels to be more wordy than necessary and convoluted in their delivery of the worldbuilding. I lowered my expectations for The Sun and the Void for this very reason, though I clung onto it because of the promise of the Venezuelan and Colombian-inspired setting and anticolonial storyline (!!!!!!!!!!!!). Beyond being sick of generic, catch-all European settings in fantasy, my half-Colombian Spidey sense was tingling…and for good reason! The Sun and the Void is an overlooked gem of epic fantasy, with magic and action abound.

The vibrant setting that Romero Lacruz crafts was the clear star of The Sun and the Void. Her South American-inspired landscape was a breath of fresh air in a sea of vaguely European epic fantasies, breathing some much-needed life and diversity into the genre. Logistically, this region of South America—Venezuela and Colombia—also provides a variety of biomes to play with: we get flashes of deserts, forests, and glittering, tropical beaches, all with a fantastical dash of demons and monsters. That alone would have already put it a step above your average epic fantasy, but it was this series’ unique fantasy races that truly shone! As metaphors for oppression and who the dominant power in society deems “acceptable,” the nozariels and valcos were effective on that front. Their designs, however, were what made them so fun, making for memorable characters in looks and culture as well as personality.

In my experience, there are certain brands of epic fantasy that are allergic to accessible writing. When I say accessible, I don’t mean simple; accessible doesn’t mean the absence of artful prose or clever metaphor. For me, accessible prose is inventive, but not so caught up in making itself sound clever that it becomes a chore to read. Romero Lacruz’s writing is a fantastic case study in how to hit the balance between artful and digestible. Every action scene, political machination, and argument is rendered in ways that do feel like how people talk, and yet she never forgets to season her prose with unique metaphors and descriptors of the characters and their surroundings that keep you hooked—or, in my case, vigorously highlighting on my Kindle. At no point did the writing feel pompous or overly convinced of its own talent—it’s writing for writing’s taste, which is what writing should be.

Power dynamics were at the forefront of The Sun and the Void, and the explorations of them were some of the most impactful parts of the novel. Through the side characters, Romero Lacruz portrays the different way that power manifests itself in people; no matter how “noble” their causes, characters like Doña Ursulina and Javier became so obsessed with achieving their goals that it subtly began to eclipse all else. What was unique about The Sun and the Void, however, was how it was framed: through the eyes of vulnerable, sensitive women that get pulled under their spells. Such abusive dynamics meant that Reina and Eva were respectively drawn into the web of these other characters. At no point were they helpless—they were victim to people that promised them healing or freedom, and became so entangled in the schemes of others that they had to fight tooth and claw to find their way back to the light.

That being said, the weakest links in The Sun and the Void lay in the worldbuilding. Even though this novel is one of the few lengthy epic fantasies that I’ve read that miraculously doesn’t get overly convoluted, the price it paid was that some of the worldbuilding was left messy and sloppy once I took a closer look. The glossary was helpful, but it took quite a while to get used to some of the intricacies of the magic system. Terms are thrown around in a very slipshod way, and instead of the dreaded page-long block of worldbuilding exposition, we get…a few sentences, at most, before said facet of the magic system is barely mentioned for the rest of the novel. It’s an issue with followthrough—once something was mentioned, it often took 300 pages for it to make a brief appearance, only to poof back into the unexplained ether. It’s clear that there was a lot of thought behind the worldbuilding, but the issue was more of following the time-honored rule of Chekhov’s gun—Chekhov’s magic system, in this case. The gun did go off in the end, but it took so long to get to that moment that I completely forgot the significance of it being there in the first place.

All in all, an epic fantasy that defied the conventions of the genre—setting, writing style, and more—in all of the best ways. 4 stars!

The Sun and the Void is the first novel in the Warring Gods series, followed by The River and the Star, which is slated for release in 2025. The Sun and the Void is Romero Lacruz’s debut novel.

Today’s song:

BLESSED WITH ANOTHER NEW SOCCER MOMMY TRACK AND A NORTH AMERICAN TOUR NEXT YEAR!!!!!

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (8/13/24) – Beautyland

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

As far as science fiction goes, I’m not usually for the literary side of it—that goes for most literary novels of any genre, to be honest. I’ve often found that the sci-fi part is dulled in favor of mass appeal. But the premise of Beautyland fascinated me, not just as a science fiction reader, but as someone who’s grown up feeling like an alien. Surprise, surprise—I cried.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Beautyland – Marie-Helene Bertino

Philadelphia, 1977. Humanity has given the gift of Voyager 1, along with its landmark Golden Record, to space. Unbeknownst to us, a power hidden deep in the cosmos has given humanity a gift in exchange. At the same time as the launch of Voyager 1, a baby is born to an unknowing mother, not human but alien. Her mother names her Adina, and as Adina grows older, she learns how to communicate with her kinfolk in space, reporting the oddities of human life and culture through an old fax machine. As Adina pretends to be human, she experiences the joy and terror of human existence, but longs for closure—will she ever be able to return to her homeworld?

TW/CW: cancer, sexual harassment, loss of loved ones, pet death, bullying, grief, 9/11 themes (brief)

One of the best feelings is when you pick up a book that you’re interested in, but not expecting anything marvelous from, and then getting absolutely pied in the face out of nowhere with the feeling that this book gets me. Setting aside my reservations for literary sci-fi, Beautyland digs into the heart of my experience growing up—of feeling alien, but of cataloguing all of the nonsensical facets of American culture and the feeling of not belonging. I cried. I laughed. I had an echoing pang in my chest for a while. Like life, all of it was worth reading and living.

Observations about the human condition formed the heart of Beautyland. Through Adina’s messages on a fax machine, she reports to her alien superiors on everything from the oddities of American culture (“When it was time to decide the official food of movie-watching, human beings did not go for Fig Newtons or caramel, foods that are silent, but popcorn, the loudest sound on earth”) to the painful and uneasy truths of human existence (“The ego of the human male is by far the most dangerous aspect of human society”). Bertino’s writing shone the most when chronicling Adina’s observations. She adopted a blunt, matter-of-fact tone of a distanced journalist, someone watching our species from the sidelines, yet always managed to wring the emotion from it, be it humor or sorrow. The wonder of Adina when she visited her superiors at night, in a vast room inside of her mind, was just as palpable, capturing her childlike curiosity. You felt every joy of Adina reporting back on the eccentricities of humanity, and every sorrow once Adina matures and realizes the dark side of our nature. The eventual abandonment of her superiors as she grew older drove the point home even more—at a certain point, nobody can answer these questions for you, and you realize that you don’t have the answers, and neither does anyone else. All that’s left to do is live your life, and observe.

Though it wasn’t outright said or diagnosed, the neurodivergent themes of Beautyland were what stuck with me the most. (I have sensory processing disorder, and, among other things, I felt Adina’s growing discomfort with sensations as simple as hearing people breathe and chew.) Whether or not you believe that Adina is actually an alien, the experience of being on the fringes and unable to understand not just other people but their actions deeply resonated with me. As Adina moves through middle and high school and is ostracized by her more popular peers and tries to scientifically observe them, she’s confronted with a frequent feeling of questioning why it has to be this way: why are these girls looking at me like I’m gum on the bottom of their shoes? Why is not wanting sex such an affront to men? Why don’t they like me? That feeling of knowing something’s missing, but being unable to find it, put into words a feeling I struggled with through my adolescence, a sense that everybody else knew something I didn’t, and that was what made me so strange to them.

I read Beautyland as both science fiction and historical fiction; some people have put it up in the air as to whether or not Adina actually is an alien, but I think the answer is…yes. Both can be true. I’ve grown up in a similar way to Adina, feeling so on the outside of everything that I’ve attached myself to science fiction and alienness in general. Like Adina, it’s informed by some neurodivergence and general outsiderness, but there’s something to be said for all of the questions presented being true. Yes, she may be an alien sent from an advanced race beyond the solar system, and yes, she has some neurodivergent tendencies as well. The two can coexist. And Beautyland’s embrace of how these qualities can intersect was what made it so impactful; this experience fundamentally makes us human, even if it makes us feel alien. I often see criticism of alien or robot characters who are characterized as “inhuman,” but what makes them inhuman boils down to them just having the traits of neurodivergent people (“lack” of emotion, misunderstanding of how humans work) and those on the asexual/aromantic spectrum (no desire for romance or sex, that which “makes us human”), and I think it’s a valid criticism to apply to characters who are written thoughtlessly. But who’s to say that an alien character like this can’t also be neurodivergent and asexual? Again: the two can coexist. Bertino wrote Adina as a character with a deep understanding of human culture, and that, to me, does not skew the reading of her as asexual and neurodivergent.

Somehow, one of the most emotional parts of Beautyland for me was how Bertino wrote about Carl Sagan. As I mentioned before, the novel is written in fragments, not always linearly, but taking frequent detours outside of Adina’s immediate life and into moments of relevant pop culture at the time—the popularity of Carl Sagan being one of them. With her connection to the Golden Record and the absence of her own father, Adina looks up to Sagan as a surrogate father, someone who can teach her more about the cosmos from which she was born from. Even having never met him in person, the way that Adina processed Sagan’s death was where I lost it; this is one of her first experiences of loss, and it’s the loss of someone who has unknowingly guided her through her alien life, teaching her about the universe, and by proxy, given her a roadmap of the human condition. Fleeting as it was, Bertino wrote this instance—and the connection to Sagan in general—with the kind of love of someone you feel like you’ve known all your life, but have never even met.

All in all, a deeply human exploration of what it means to be alien. 5 stars!

Beautyland is a standalone, but Marie-Helene Bertino is also the author of Parakeet, 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas, and the short story collection Safe as Houses.

Today’s song:

new Smile!! not my favorite, and I can see why they left it off the album, but a solid track nonetheless.

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: 8/11/24

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: When I say L, you say OG! L TO THE…?

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 8/11/24

“Lazy Eye” – Silversun Pickups

This song returned to me like an old friend not long ago, and with it, some misconceptions that were only picked apart when I saw the music video for the first time. For the longest time, I thought that a woman was singing this song; I saw Nikki Monninger and thought, naturally, she had to be the one singing, right? Wrong—Brian Aubert just has a uniquely high-pitched, more androgynous voice. (To be fair to my past self, Monninger does sing lead on a handful of their newer songs, but she primarily plays bass.)

I specifically remember the only other Silversun Pickups song I know, “Circadian Rhythm (Last Dance)” being on heavy rotation on Sirius XMU back when I was in middle school, but even around 10 years apart from each other, “Lazy Eye” has that same meticulous drive that the best 2000’s indie-rock track had. It’s almost startling to me that this song isn’t the opening track of the album, Carnavas, even having heard nothing else from it—there’s just a feeling of it that’s just so distinctly beginning. The instrumentals build up from steady indie-rock, laden with foreshadowing in the form of Aubert’s driving flourishes of both vocals and guitar. “Lazy Eye” segues into a second act that can bear no description other than explosive, splattering in your face like a can of soda shaken up for too long. But as quickly as everything ricochets in a thousand directions, the floorboards fall out from under it, returning to its mellow origins as the repeated outro of “The room, the sun and sky” fades into the woodwork. Paired with the precipice-staring lyrics of anticipation and coming to grips with reality (“I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life/But it’s not quite right”), make it feel molded for the intro of a coming-of-age movie, coming to grips with the fact that nothing’s as perfect as you can ever dress it in your imagination.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Where You See Yourself – Claire Forrest – “I’ve been waiting/I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life/But it’s not quite right…”

“Juna” – Clairo

I’m far from caught up on any kind of Clairo lore, but apparently “Juna” is the first song that she’s ever made a music video for! There’s something funny, unintentionally or not, about having a song (and a singer) as unassuming as Clairo set against the backdrop of a bunch of screaming, oiled-up wrestlers tossing each other around. Somehow, it works.

Clairo has never fully blown me away, but every once in a while, she’ll break through the mellow and snap into something luscious that has me looping it for days. Maybe I just like Clairo when she leans into the ’70s influences—I always come back to the funky bass that comes through the sadgirl mold in “Amoeba,” but “Juna” fully leans into it. If you took away the synths and left in the layered piano riffs, this track would feel like pure ’70s soul. I’d be fully convinced if there turned out to be some grand conspiracy to make this song just to soundtrack playing pool in a dimly-lit club, flickering lights fading both inside and out as the multicolored balls collide across the velvet. It has all the grace of aging, velvet curtains and the twinkling of new, flirtatious love, the kind that pushes you towards things you wouldn’t have done before: “You make me wanna go dancing/You make me wanna try on feminine/You make me wanna go buy a new dress/You make me wanna slip off a new dress.” Clairo’s voice constantly feels seconds away from dissipating into thin air, but she pulls off the sultry groove that “Juna” presents. And somehow, just like the bizarre juxtaposition of this song’s gentle disposition and said video of greasy wrestlers, something about Clairo’s mouth-trumpet breakdown (new sentences are formed every day) fits right in. I’d prefer…maybe more actual trumpet, but I feel like there’s something perfect about this song not taking itself too seriously. (Not necessarily everybody else in the video hamming up said mouth-trumpet breakdown…yeah)

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue – V.E. Schwab – “Most of these days/I don’t get too intimate/Why would I let you in?/But I think again…”

“Drain Me!” – Towa Bird

One of my first thoughts while listening to “Drain Me!” was that it sounded like Pixies if they’d gone pop. Seems like an oxymoron, but I swear that there’s something about the guitars near the last third and the chord progression that reeks of “Gigantic.” Conclusion: this is Pixies, if they happened to be a) more pop-inclined, and b) ragingly lesbian.

I’m sure you have to be an unattainable, Taylor Swift level of influential to be able to control when your record comes out, but releasing Towa Bird’s debut, American Hero, this May, right before the rush of summer, was a genius move. Granted, this is the only song of hers I’ve heard, but it is a PERFECT summer song. Charged with reckless kisses and clandestine meetings, it feels like the kind of head-over-heels love that’s made for blasting with the windows down, careening down the highway. Bird’s guitar-driven approach pulls it ever-so-slightly out of the mold of mainstream pop, but there’s no denying that this is a summery pop song for our day and age—you make a song like this, and you’re just asking to have it featured in Heartstopper or something. And how wonderful is it that we have so many out, queer pop songs? Open queerness exists in almost every genre right now, but even if I don’t like a particular artist, it gives me hope to remember that songs about women loving women can draw massive crowds—and even better that this one was written by a woman of color. It’s not like this song is revolutionary, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth celebrating—and fully worth dancing around to.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Road to Ruin – Hana Lee – Daredevil sensibilities, magic-powered motorbikes in the post-apocalyptic wasteland…and queer women.

“Lorelei” – Cocteau Twins

Thus (tentatively) concludes my Cocteau Twins summer…for now, at least, until it’s cold and I can allow myself to listen to Victorialand. Cocteau T-winter.

I’ll see myself out…

This is the only track I’ve heard off of their 1984 album Treasure, which critics seem to have attached themselves to like the album’s namesake, but has been described by the band themselves in terms including but not limited to Robin Guthrie calling it “an abortion.” Yeah…again, harsh, but if this is the only track I take from it, how on Earth does “Lorelei” deserve that slander from its own creator? Sure, they hadn’t hit their stride at this point; it sounds more distinctly, in-your-face ’80s with its stuttering drum machine and slipshod production, but it’s all part of the charm, if you ask me. That drum machine is the paperweight keeping the billowing curtain of Elizabeth Fraser’s silk-thin voice tethered to the earthly realm. Even so early on in their career, Fraser had already honed the ethereal breath of her voice, able to make every hum, mumble, and lilt the stuff of magic itself, how I’d imagine the texture of fabric woven from the dewy web of a spider in the early hours of dawn.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Magic Steeped in Poison – Judy I. Lin – the kind of breathy, enchanting music fit for a magic system based on the properties of tea.

“L to the OG” (from Succession) – Kendall Roy

I’ve finished the first two seasons of Succession, and my main takeaway is this: watching Kendall Roy, a middle-aged billionaire whose vocabulary consists of every corporate buzzword imaginable strung into a sentence, not only try to rap, but say a line like “yo, bitches be catty/but the King Kong daddy/Rock all the haters while we go roll a fatty” gave me more whiplash than the twist ending of the season finale. It’s like watching a train wreck…you just can’t peel your eyes away…

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Electric Circus – Timothy Lipton – “It’s about a young man making his way through the world. It’s set in two different time periods; it kinda switches back and forth…the circus part is a metaphor for the anxiety of modern life.” – Roman Roy, starred review

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 (8/6/24) – The Stardust Grail

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Here I was thinking that I hadn’t had a 5-star read in so long, and bam…two in a row! I was expecting to enjoy The Stardust Grail because I loved The Deep Sky, Yume Kitasei’s debut. To my delight, it turned in a much more space opera direction, but not only that—it had one of the most heartwarming sci-fi universes that I’ve had the privilege of experiencing!

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Stardust Grail – Yume Kitasei

Maya Hoshimoto is a grad student, pouring her life into her studies on an Earth university far from her colony home. But what her university doesn’t know is that her extensive background in alien cultures comes from a history of art theft, stealing alien artifacts and returning them to their rightful owners. When a friend from her past offers her one last job, Maya is ready to refuse—until she learns that the artifact in question could mean that her friend’s species could be brought back from the brink of extinction. Plunged back into her old life, Maya now faces her hardest job yet—putting an entire alien species on the line.

TW/CW (from Yume Kitasei): themes of colonialism/imperialism, genocide, chronic illness (migraines), torture, suicidal ideation (brief), violence/gore, torture/confinement, war themes, pandemic

I loved The Deep Sky, but it was more literary than my usual tastes in sci-fi. I went into The Stardust Grail expecting more of the same, knowing I’d enjoy it, but I did not anticipate it being the perfect book for my constant space opera hankering! Heartwarming friendships, intergalactic hijinks, and excellent creature design—I’m ecstatic to report that The Stardust Grail has it all!

You all knew I was going to go after the creature design first. THE CREATURE DESIGN!! THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE CREAM OF THE CROP HERE!! My only issue is that we didn’t get to see all of the alien species that Kitasei set up, but to be fair, with a story jam-packed with rival parties and factions, it would’ve been a chore to have to incorporate every single one of them. (Maybe what we need is a companion novel in this universe? WE NEED TO MAKE IT HAPPEN!) Back to my point—even in sci-fi, it’s a difficult task to make aliens feel truly alien, not just in looks, but in culture, lifespans, and general quirks. The Frenro, and Auncle in particular, felt bizarre in the best possible way. I love a good cephalopod-like creature, but Kitasei did an excellent job of portraying not just xer mannerisms and what made xem unique as a species, but having those in contact with Maya’s more human sensibilities—there’s a ton of cultural confusion, even though they’ve been friends for at least a decade, but both Kitasei and the characters themselves handle it with a humorous grace. I also loved the design of the Belzoar—again, arachnid-like aliens are also tons of fun, but like the Frenro, they had enough distinguishing qualities to separate them from just being giant spiders.

I could go on and on about how much I adored these characters! Even if I didn’t have a soft spot for alien characters in the first place (being marginalized and generally an outcast will do that), Auncle would be my favorite by far—xe was just so delightful in their joyous dialogue and relentless optimism, but xer deep history of tragedy, both personal and in the context of xer species, was handled with all of the respect that it deserved—xe was joyous in spite of it all, because joy is all you’ve got in some cases. (AMEN!!) Maya was a fantastic protagonist—like Auncle, Kitasei did an excellent job of giving the reader the full breadth of her motivations and past that led her to the place where she is now. Her devotion to a fair galaxy and to help the Frenro made for a beautiful quest, and her feeling of outsiderness amongst both humans and aliens resonated deeply with me. (Given the themes of mixed-race identity in The Deep Sky, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was another analog. YES!!!) Wil and Medix were charming and lovable as side characters, and all of the colorful denizens of the galaxy were equally so—not a single character felt flat or out of place.

In her personal review of the novel on Goodreads, Yume Kitasei cites Star Wars—A New Hope in particular—as her primary inspiration for writing The Stardust Grail and much of her other science fiction. The Deep Sky was much more on the literary side of sci-fi, and while I loved it, I’m hoping that Kitasei keeps in this direction for her next few books. (I’ll read anything she writes at this point, but my statement still stands.) As a fellow space opera girlie and an avid Star Wars fan, the passion of both Kitasei’s personal life and her love for those movies shines through in The Stardust Grail. Kitasei took all of the right lessons from George Lucas and company. Not only do we have a vibrant galaxy full of characters who are just as vibrant, this novel hits the right balance of emotional weight and campy, truly fun action. Speaking of George Lucas…another obvious inspiration in the latter third of the novel was the Indiana Jones franchise, and those action scenes were the best kind of fun amidst an otherwise deeply grounded and emotional novel. Never at any point do the emotion and serious themes contradict the aforementioned action, nor the other way around—all of it is earned, and all of it feels like a worthy tribute both Star Wars and other such space opera works.

Speaking of said serious and emotional themes…as I said earlier, The Stardust Grail has such grace in the way that it handles the myriad of themes that it explores. From Maya’s lasting effects of an alien illness that linger into her life to her experience as an outsider, being raised on a colony isolated from Earth, every topic is treated with the weight it deserves. Imperialism and the ownership of art is the primary theme of the novel, and it’s unabashedly anti-colonial, which I adored. However, it didn’t just say “colonialism bad” and leave it at that—just as in the real world, nothing in The Stardust Grail is without nuance. With dozens of alien species and factions amongst said species, everything is gray, even in the case of their main mission. Would it have been fine if all there was to The Stardust Grail is “colonialism bad?” Sure, I agree. But the fact that Kitasei chose to explore all of the layers to the various conflicts and perspectives made it so much more worthwhile.

All in all, a deeply emotional and heartwarming tale of resistance, friendship across cultural barriers, and retaining joy in spite of it all. 5 stars!

The Stardust Grail is a standalone, but Yume Kitasei is also the author of The Deep Sky.

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: 8/4/24

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

This week: I fully see the irony of putting a song called “Get Off the Internet” on a blog post……….decidedly on the internet, but you get it, right? Right?

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 8/4/24

“Get Off the Internet” – Le Tigre

I miss when people could get along despite their politics, but…have you seen Project 2025 lately? Were you not paying attention to Trump’s entire presidency? I wouldn’t be saying this if, y’know, they weren’t trying to take all of our rights away, but…

GET OFF THE INTERNET!! DESTROY THE RIGHT WING!!!!

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America – edited by Amy Reed – modern accounts of femininity and feminism from a collection of incredible authors.

“Gran Mamare” (from Ponyo) – Joe Hisaishi

Watching Ponyo as an adult felt like watching it for the first time. Technically, my recent rewatch was my second time seeing it in over a decade. Every time I’ve thought about it before then, it felt like a fever dream…probably because my first viewing was something along those lines. I was about 5 or 6, and I’m almost positive that I was home sick from school. Either way, I was in my parents’ bed. All I could remember were faint glimpses of Ponyo underwater, the man, the myth, the legend, Fujimoto (close enough, welcome back David Bowie)…and Granmamare.

If there’s any gorgeously-crafted scene (of which there are many) to take away from that movie, it’s any scene with her. No wonder my five-year-old brain retained an image of such beauty, even when it was (probably) sick. Her first appearance isn’t necessarily emotional—all she’s doing is talking to Fujimoto about what to do with Ponyo—but all of the sudden, I found myself overcome with tears. All those years ago, and it took my breath away. (And who better to voice such a goddess of such beauty than Cate Blanchett? It had to be Cate Blanchett.) Maybe I was just in an emotional state, but something in the sheer beauty of that scene stirred up something hidden and beautiful in me. Joe Hisaishi’s sweeping score gives it an appropriately sparkling, John Williams-like grandeur, befitting of a character so powerful that she illuminates the whole ocean with her radiance.

Either way, I’m so glad that I rewatched it. Ponyo want ham.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Lakelore – Anna-Marie McLemore – mysterious and magical underwater realms, anyone? (Admittedly, Ponyo delivers much more on that aspect, but you can’t beat Miyazaki.)

“I’ve Got Me” – Joanna Sternberg

The name of the video is a bit of a misnomer, in my opinion—yes, technically it is a lyric video, but the lyrics are accompanied by a full-color comic drawn by Sternberg, which makes it feel like a fully-fledged music video. It’s so worth a watch—they have such a charming art style.

When I say this, I say it with all of the affection in my soul, but it’s remarkable that at only 32, Joanna Sternberg sounds just like a kind, elderly music teacher. Again: nothing but affection. Their voice just emanates that comfort that I associate with the kind of person who teaches preschoolers how to use maracas and such. The album art, as well as the associated art only add to the vibe—the scratchy inking and pastel backgrounds only add to the feeling that I would find this CD in said music teacher’s collection. Heck, I can almost imagine having to sing “I’ve Got Me” in a preschool program, if not for lines like “between self-hatred and self-awareness is a very small, thin line.”

Nonetheless, all of this is to say that “I’ve Got Me” has a purity to it. It’s got the sing-songy sway of a children’s song, but in its touching vulnerability, brushes over a sentiment I’ve battled with for much of my life: “why is it so hard to be kind and gentle to myself?” (Boy, do I relate to the panel at 0:46 with a sullen-faced Sternberg wearing thick-framed glasses captioned “me looking through the file cabinet in my brain that stores all of my bad memories”—even better, it’s alphabetized.) Armed with nothing more than their acoustic guitar and a stand-up bass, they produce a solution that gives this even more of a children’s music feel: “Take the box of self-deprecation/Lock it and put it on the shelf/Then wait five days, take that box/And throw it in the fire.” Through said self-deprecation gathering dust and anxiety on the shelf, Sternberg retains an understated but resilient hope—”I’ve Got Me” as a title feels like an assertion that, no matter if you think you’re alone, you are all you’ve got. You have but one body and one mind, in all of its flaws, and you may not be able to control some of the inevitable bouts of self-deprecation, but it’s still you, in the end.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Someone You Can Build a Nest In – John Wiswell – in both a literal and figurative sense, learning self-love after viewing yourself as monstrous.

“Learning to Apologize Effectively” – Deerhoof

Being a newcomer to Deerhoof is a unique experience because I can never seem to find a consensus about what they sound like—or what other people think they sound like, at any rate. One reviewer says this is a return to form, another critic says it’s some kind of new venture, like nothing they’ve ever done before. The only consensus I can seem to draw is that they’re bent on being weird—and I have nothing but admiration for that, especially after seeing the craft to their weirdness. (Learning “Future Teenage Cave Artists” on guitar and having to puzzle through not one but four odd time signatures with my guitar teacher sure was something.)

Either way, I’m almost ashamed to say that the YouTube algorithm spat this one up before me, but I’m not one to complain. I’m done being ashamed with how I found out about songs—so long as I have the song in my hands and I enjoy listening to it, what’s the issue, really? “Learning To Apologize Effectively” is much more rock-oriented (as its album, The Magic, seems to be in its entirety), with crashing. classic rock-recalling guitars. Yet even if their inspirations for this track lie more in mainstream rock, there’s that undeniable weirdness that seems to ooze from their music no matter what. Like with “Future Teenage Cave Artists,” Satomi Matsuzaki’s vocals have an uncanny quality to them, not necessarily in the sound of her voice, but in the ever so off-kilter timing of it—I can’t pin down a time signature, but in her “the song is waiting for another song” intro, each pause makes a deliberate form of obscurity, darting into an unexpected corner when you expect it to go down the well-lit hallway right in front of it. It feels like an imitation of rock from a band used to making the most deliberately strange music for most of their career—an imitation that feels almost authentic.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Lagoon – Nnedi Okorafor – “And when we saw what we were doing wrong/We found the cause underwater, long/And then we saw what we were doing wrong…”

“Miss Amanda Jones” – The Rolling Stones

For a fleeting moment, I can pretend that this song exists in a vacuum, and that Mick Jagger hasn’t been acting like it’s 1967 for the past five decades or so. The fact that he (and Keith Richards) have actually survived long enough to act like they’re 20 for so long is almost impressive, but…yikes, dude.

As much as I rag on Jagger and company, I can’t deny that for at least a decade or so, he and the rest of the Stones could concoct some truly legendary songs. Of course they could, they’re the Rolling Stones! Yet somehow, I rarely see this one among the greatest hits—maybe it’s the rose-colored glasses shielding everything once more, but I feel like if it was good enough to name a whole character after it in Some Kind of Wonderful, that has to give it some street cred, right? (So real of them to name a character after a song just so that they could play said song in the movie. I feel like I’m gonna wind up doing that someday.) Aside from being a staple of car rides in my early childhood, it’s just so unbelievably tightly-wound. Not a single cog is winding out of sync, from the twin talents of Brian Jones’ rhythm guitar and Keith Richards’ spiky riffs—in 1966, we already had the precursor to my favorite, early-’70s guitar sound, warm and thick as a fresh pot of soup. It’s a bit too rough around the edges (for the ’60s, anyway) to really be truly jangly, but it’s got the swagger and sway that makes the rock of the ’60s so delightful to listen to.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Little Thieves – Margaret Owen – “Just watch her as she grow/Don’t want to say it very obviously /But she’s losing her nobility, Miss Amanda Jones …”

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 Monthly Wrap-Ups

July 2024 Wrap-Up 🌤

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Wednesday, bibliophiles!

Somehow July’s already over…it felt awfully fast, yet the heat made the evenings so slow…time, huh?

Let’s begin, shall we?

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

July for sure had its ups and downs; I was getting hit with the election anxiety big time at the beginning of the month…so naturally, I was overjoyed at the prospect that Biden had dropped out of the election. Comforting that my options aren’t just “old white man with dementia” and “old white man with dementia who also happens to be a felon.” (Still. No excuse to vote for the felon, folks. Harris 2024!). So my faith has been restored on that front, and I’ve ended the month on a much more hopeful note, thankfully. America remains a dumpster fire, but least there’s some light at the end of the tunnel.

I was able to read a good amount this month, though! As is with every year, I was scrambling to find more and more books with disability rep for Disability Pride Month (there’s a solid amount out there, but it’s still fairly scarce), but I ended up reading some excellent books as a result! Summer has confined me to the house for the most part, what with the miserable heat (listen, I like summer, but not 90 degree heat, let me be clear), but it’s given me plenty of time to read—and to write! I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo this month, and as of today, I reached my goal of 50,000 words a day early! I had no idea that I’d be able to pull it off a day early—I had my ups and downs as far as motivation goes, but now, I’m a little over halfway through my first draft of this novel! I’ve also had fun with my blogging this month, and I feel like I’ve written some productive reviews.

Other than that, I’ve just been drawing, playing guitar, drinking a ton of tea, watching Succession (nearly finished with season 2!), watching and re-watching several Studio Ghibli movies (technically, I saw Ponyo when I was 5, but it felt like a fever dream back then…MUCH more beautiful now!), and doing everything I can to get out of this heat.

READING AND BLOGGING:

I read 18 books this month! As with every month, there were some hits (nearly 5 stars) and misses (an unfortunate DNF…), but I especially had fun reading books for this year’s Disability Pride Month!

1 – 1.75 stars:

The Secret Summer Promise

2 – 2.75 stars:

Cascade Failure

3 – 3.75 stars:

Accessing the Future

4 – 4.75 stars:

Year of the Tiger

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH – Someone You Can Build a Nest In – 4.5 stars

Someone You Can Build a Nest In

POSTS I’M PROUD OF:

POSTS FROM OTHER WONDERFUL PEOPLE THAT I ENJOYED:

SONGS/ALBUMS THAT I’VE BEEN ENJOYING:

so glad I gave this album a try!
:,)
this song’s had a massive chokehold on me for at least three weeks now…
thank you to horsegirl for deerhoof and this song!!
this album is instant calm…
so glad I remembered this song… :,)

Today’s song:

RETURN OF THE SNAIL

That’s it for this month in blogging! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (7/30/24) – To a Darker Shore

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I was first exposed to Leanne Schwartz through A Prayer for Vengeance, and enjoyed her YA fantasies that centered autistic and plus-size protagonists. I’d forgotten that she’d written another book featuring an autistic protagonist, and I figured it would be perfect for Disability Pride Month. While it didn’t blow me away, To a Darker Shore had a lovely setting with immersive writing and the journey of a courageous girl who would quite literally walk through hell to save her best friend.

Enjoy this week’s review!

To a Darker Shore – Leanne Schwartz

If there’s one thing that Alesta has known her whole life, it’s that she knows that she has something to prove. Poor, autistic, and plus-size, she means nothing to the townsfolk, save for what she can provide as a sacrifice to their hungry god, Hektorus. So she throws herself into intricate inventions, hoping they can earn her favor with the king. But when a test flight of one of her flying machines goes awry at an exhibition, Alesta knows she’s bound for hell. Yet it’s Kyrian, who helped her test the machine, that takes the fall, now condemned to hell instead of her. Alesta will do anything to bring Kyrian back…even if it means venturing into the treacherous depths of Hell itself.

TW/CW: loss of loved ones, misogyny, fatphobia, ableism, violence, blood/gore, claustrophobia, panic attacks, grief, homophobia

Why does WordPress keep trying to autocorrect “Alesta” to “Alert?” I can only imagine how it was while Schwartz was writing the book in the first place…

Even though Leanne Schwartz isn’t my favorite author, I love her apparent goal of putting out YA fantasy novels with plus-size, queer, and neurodivergent characters at the forefront. A Prayer for Vengeance didn’t blow me away, but it was an enjoyable read nonetheless; to an extent, I feel a similar way about To a Darker Shore, but it’s clear that her writing has improved greatly in the span of two books!

Schwartz’s lovely prose was clearly the star of To a Darker Shore. Throughout the novel, there’s a stark contrast between the fantasy, Renaissance Italy-inspired whimsy and the monstrous realms of hell, but Schwartz handled each of them with the appropriate weight they deserved. The first part of the novel did a wonderful job of immersing me in Alesta’s kingdom, and with every description of the coastline surroundings and the bustling cities, I was instantly transported. Schwartz’s balance of humor and weighty subjects (ableism, fatphobia, and purity culture, to name a few) was handled with aplomb—the strength of all of these aspects is how balanced they were. Additionally, To a Darker Shore’s writing felt like the perfect transition between Middle Grade and YA; apart from some violence and strong language, the accessible writing style and the narrative voice of Alesta could be a great bridge for younger YA readers to start in the genre.

Alesta was also a fantastic protagonist to propel the reader through this treacherous journey into hell! Schwartz did an excellent job of relying on showing to build up to the suspense of losing her best friend; by the time Alesta’s quest through hell begins, you truly do understand her relentless devotion to rescuing her friend, even if when they reunite, hell has permanently altered him. She stopped at nothing to make sure Kyrian made it out of hell alive, and you believed every part of her friendship and steadfast adherence to her mission. Her relentless spirit not only gave the story stakes (I certainly got the sense both she and Kyrian would fall apart without the other), but a reason to follow her along—at its best, there were times when I was invested in the story just because Alesta cared so deeply for succeeding in her impossible mission. Although I liked A Prayer for Vengeance, Leanne Schwartz’s way of writing her protagonists has improved since then, and Alesta is living proof.

I came away from To a Darker Shore with mixed feelings about the worldbuilding. On the one hand, I enjoyed the Renaissance Italy-inspired setting; Alesta is compared to Leonardo Da Vinci in the synopsis, and I loved the aesthetic of her wooden flying machines and the various magical contraptions that she constructed. The worldbuilding surrounding the religion that concerns most of the novel was also well-executed. Schwartz did an excellent job of setting up exposition in a variety of ways, ranging from stories that Alesta had grown up with to descriptions of religious festivals that served to explain some of the mythology. However, even with the obviously Christian inspiration that this religion was based in…why call it Heaven and Hell if it’s an entirely different religion? I get the comparisons here, but it kind of took me out of it to have a whole fantasy religion and then have the exact same names of Christian concepts in it. Considering how detailed most other aspects of this religion were, it comes off a bit lazy—either make it a more direct analog to Christianity, or give Heaven and Hell different (and more creative) names, in my opinion.

Additionally, there were quite a few side characters that surrounded Alesta that didn’t seem like they had anything to do. Along with the dreaded time skip that came out of nowhere [hisses like a vampire with holy water chucked on it], we were just as abruptly introduced to some of Alesta’s other friends. It wouldn’t have been a problem if they had any role in the novel other than to tell the reader that Alesta has made friends after Kyrian’s sacrifice. They were pushed aside as soon as Alesta ventured into hell (a section that takes up about a third of the novel), and therefore had no room to have distinct personalities or roles other than being Alesta’s friends. Since To a Darker Shore is centered so prominently around the unbreakable friendship between Alesta and Kyrian, it would have been better to scrap them entirely—or at least not give them a role that Schwartz seemed to place disproportionate importance on.

All in all, a YA fantasy that took some shortcuts with its side characters and worldbuilding, but was nonetheless a satisfying story of friendships strong enough to survive hell itself. 3.5 stars!

To a Darker Shore is a standalone, but Leanne Schwartz is also the author of A Prayer for Vengeance.

Today’s song:

no idea how I forgot about this one, but I’m so glad I did!! a nostalgic childhood staple, for sure.

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: 7/28/24

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: surprise, surprise…I have sympathy for exactly one (1) live-action Disney remake. Soak it up while you can.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 7/28/24

“Wallowa Lake Monster” – Sufjan Stevens

The other night, a friend of mine and I were discussing the merits of album intros—cinematic curtain-openers (David Bowie’s “Future Legend”), gradually creeping easers (IDLES’ “IDEA 01”), and intros so engrossing that the rest of the album almost doesn’t measure up (Cate Le Bon’s “Dirt on the Bed”). I ended up making a Top 5 list that got so overblown that it expanded to top 10, but my friend was remarkably able to whittle it down to 5. “Wallowa Lake Monster” was squarely at the top of their list, and now I understand exactly why.

I’d call “Wallowa Lake Monster” a member of the first category, though in a different sense than “Future Legend.” The album it opens is The Greatest Gift, a mixtape of remixes, demos, and tracks cut from Carrie and Lowell, making “Wallowa Lake Monster” a b-side. I’m now experiencing “Burning Bridge” levels of how the hell was this a b-side, because, in my limited experience of Sufjan Stevens, how does one cut a track this cinematic? Who knows, with what little I know of Carrie and Lowell, save for that it deals with his complicated relationship to his mother. The gliding electronics seem to ripple like lake water itself, as wispy as Stevens’ voice as he opens his tale as one might a storybook: his mother’s twin struggles of alcoholism and schizophrenia become the backdrop for the Wallowa Lake Monster, a creature from Nez Perce legend, as it slowly pulls her under the waves: “And like the cedar wax wing, she was drunk all day/We put her in the sheet, little wreath, candles on the crate/As the monster showed its face.” There’s enough references, from scientific names for flowers to Dungeons & Dragons monsters to the Odyssey, to require three different dictionaries open at once while listening—Stevens has often fallen into the “overly pretentious” side of indie rock in my purview, and although that’s still not without basis, it’s clear that he’s a very literary-minded songwriter. It wasn’t surprising to learn that Stevens originally got his MFA in creative writing! A line as literary as “The undertow refrained with the flame of a feathered snake/Charybdis in its shallow grave” couldn’t have come from anyone but an English major, and that’s pretentious game recognizing game.

Yet in spite of such stunning lyricism, the lyric-less parts are what floored me on the first listen of “Wallowa Lake Monster.” After the flitting, storybook storytelling, clouded in Oregon fog, there was no other way to go but a nearly three-minute, instrumental outro, from synths that cut like searchlights through the dark to a cavernous choir that only rises in its intensity. It grows to such a bellow that you feel its physicality towering over you, much like I would imagine the fraught memory of such a deeply flawed yet deeply important figure in one’s life. It nearly eclipses all else about the song until its final, electronic exhalations.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Our Crooked Hearts – Melissa Albert: brimming with magic and secrets, this novel explores a similarly fraught relationship between mother and child.

“No God” – Cate Le Bon

When I talked about “Dirt on the Bed” last week, I talked about how much Cate Le Bon reminded me of St. Vincent, down to their humbler, more arty beginnings. They’re both arty at present, but the art I’m thinking of is more the quaint, fresh-out-of music college sound that St. Vincent had on Marry Me, an era that she recently jokingly referred to as her “asexual Pollyanna” period. Ouch…I can’t say that it doesn’t make sense, because it…does, in a way, but it feels dismissive of all the rampant creativity swirling about in that album.

Cate Le Bon seems to have wallowed in that artsy, borderline twee period for much longer than St. Vincent did; Mug Museum is her third album, and the tracks I’ve heard all ring with that early-2010’s indie, folksy leaning. Le Bon’s Welsh lilt twists ordinary words into melted candy, and much like St. Vincent, her riffs wind around the melody like tiny flower buds bursting from vines crawling up a fading brick wall. Some songs were made for summer strolls, and “No God”‘s bright melodies brim with sunshine and the security of concrete under your feet as you take a morning walk through the city, stopping to sniff a basket of flowers in the window of a storefront. Her vocals get their well-deserved spotlight in the chorus, rich and bubbling with each drawn-out cry of “No Go-o-o-o-o-d,” swirling into the morning dew.

Yet the cheery exterior hides the grief that clouds her 2013 album Mug Museum; much of the album was written after the death of Le Bon’s beloved grandmother, and the title itself explains the memories contained in ordinary objects—an accumulation of mugs, for instance. But the grief of Mug Museum is more of a recognition of lineage; Le Bon said that “The album was inspired by the loss of my maternal grandmother but rather than it being a grief laden album it is more about what someone at the top of the female chain leaves behind.” The lilting repetition of “No God” is suddenly recontextualized as not necessarily spiritual, but the loss of the ground beneath your feet, the rug pulled out from under you now that there’s no maternal anchor. The God here is more a feeling of connection to your feminine ancestors and the security it brings—and the upending of that security once death overcomes the family.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Isles of the Gods – Amie Kaufman – “When leading lambs lose track/Hands hold me back/I saw a face again/I pulled it from my head/No looking, I know it well…”

“Athol-brose” – Cocteau Twins

Another merit I’ve discovered in my apparent Cocteau Twins summer is that they’re perfect for easing overstimulation. In my ongoing journey to better manage my sensory issues, I’ve compiled a playlist full of songs I use to come down from sensory overload, distinct from the playlist where I just pile on all the slow songs. Sensory overload calming demands a more specific kind of slowness, the kind that oozes relaxation and massages every fold of my overstimulated brain.

There you have it. I’ve just described most of the Cocteau Twins’ discography. The combination of their lazy, dreamlike pace and the swirl of graceful gibberish in Elizabeth Fraser’s vocals make them prime sensory calm material. (That instant muscular relaxation I felt when I first heard “Oomingmak” is a sensation I desperately need to bottle the next time I’m overstimulated.) After a recent bout of overstimulation that had me cycling through all of their music that I had on my phone, I decided to bump Blue Bell Knoll up to a higher priority on my Sisyphean Album Bucket List, but also…y’know, Cocteau Twins. I’m waiting until I’m hibernating in December or January for the wintry Victorialand, but Blue Bell Knoll, with its bedsheet white, silken melodies was a welcome embrace after a month of election anxiety (finally quelled for the most part…anyways, HARRIS 2024). I’m glad that I’d only heard “Carolyn’s Fingers” (a song that goes eerily well with “Creep”…somebody needs to make that mashup), because letting Blue Bell Knoll wash over me in nearly-new wholeness was the best way to breathe it in.

“Athol-brose” starts off with a soft-spoken, percussive beat, but quickly swallows you in a murmuring whirlpool, a whispering chorus of voices bobbing and humming in unison like songbirds on the wind. The more distinct, angular synths pave an easy path to Heaven or Las Vegas, their most famous effort, gliding on nebulous wings through a star-flecked field of melody. In Elizabeth Fraser’s mouth, ordinary words are made into alien percussion; the final repetition of “very very silly ball” rolls against her tongue like the rapid flutter of bee’s wings. Like the red floatboat that the album later sings of, “Athol-brose” feels about the closest thing to riding on a motorboat through a sea of stars, then reaching your fingers out to reach for each glowing filament, watching the light trail around your fingertips.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Survivor (The Pioneer, #2) – Bridget Tyler – there’s a deeply moving scene where an alien character sees his home from space for the first time, and that initial flush of sound fits that explosive wonder.

“Once Upon a Dream” (from Maleficent) – Lana Del Rey

Lana Del Rey and live-action Disney remakes are two things that have never been my cup of tea, although I’ve engaged with some of her music (“Video Games” remains a nostalgic favorite of mine) and some of the movies when I was younger. I write this fully acknowledging that the rose-colored glasses are so far up the bridge of my nose that they’re digging into my skin, but dare I say that this cover—and the film—are exceptions to the mediocrity? Maleficent was one of my favorite movies growing up, and, yeah, it’s Disney, I’m not about to rush to their defense, but I swear it’s the only one of the remakes where they didn’t outright remake it; they flipped it to Maleficent’s perspective and didn’t just rehash the story with CGI…as all the others have done. Who knows. Admittedly, I haven’t exactly been paying close attention to Disney’s army of remakes.

Either way, this is the one instance of trailerized music that clicks into place for me; James Newton Howard’s haunting, sweeping orchestration clearly set the tone for all of the Epic™️ Trailer Music that came after it, but none of his imitators captured that grandeur he establishes. Lana Del Rey’s husky but rich voice hums through a cover that brushes that silky line between darkness and fairytale innocence. I’ll say it again: nostalgia is at the wheel here, but I’d be lying if I said that remembering this cover and listening to it 10 years after Maleficent’s release didn’t give me goosebumps.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Thornhedge – T. Kingfisher – a Sleeping Beauty retelling that doesn’t shy away from hidden darkness.

“Smoke and Mirrors” – The Magnetic Fields

At this point, Stephen Merritt has probably had every weird, toxic ex in the book—either that, or he’s happened to have just a handful with all of those horrible qualities rolled into one. Either way, songs like “Smoke and Mirrors” paint him as exhausted by all of them, and understandably so; this track in particular recounts a lover who tried to woo him with sex and affection to distract from the implosion of their relationship (“Smoke and mirrors, special effects/A little fear, a little sex”). He does admit that it was mutual, but keeping up the façade clearly ground him to the bone. Somehow, Merritt makes sounding so exhausted so enchanting and artful. Melding with the appropriately smoky, hazy atmosphere, his voice drifts in and out of focus, just a passing cloud in the thick fog of synths, backing vocals, and bass. Merritt makes such a disaffected mindset into something purple-gray and glittering at the edges, even if all that color and shine is a sham when you fan all the fumes away.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The First Bright Thing – J.R. Dawson – “We were foolish, you and I/But there’s no reason to cry/We put on a lovely show, but that’s all/I had to go…”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be 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 Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (7/23/24) – Finna

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Finna has been on my radar since it came out back in 2020; it had a funny and clever concept, but it just kept being pushed back on my TBR for whatever reason. I ended up picking it up after hearing praise from one of my creative writing classmates, and although it wasn’t perfect, it delivered on its inventive premise.

Now, tread lightly! This week’s book review contains spoilers for the novella, so if you intend to read Finna, skim at your own risk.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Finna (LitenVerse, #1) – Nino Cipri

Ava and Jules barely make a living working minimum wage at LitenVarld, a Swedish furniture supply giant. Ever since they broke up, they’ve been trying to avoid each other, and with the labyrinthine structure of the store, it’s easy. But the two are thrown together when an old woman goes missing and the manager tells them that LitenVarld is no ordinary store—it’s prone to opening wormholes that lead to alternate dimensions. Ava and Jules must search across the universes to return the old woman to safety at any cost, but their superiors appear less and less like they have their needs in mind…

TW/CW: blood, violence, grief, mental health themes (anxiety and depression), misgendering

My main concern with Finna was that it would only have the premise to hold it up. It’s a fantastic premise! And although it wasn’t a perfect novella, it went far beyond the expectations for its ideas, delivering an anti-capitalist spin on the monstrous multiverse.

Making Finna a novella was, without a doubt, a wise move. It’s got an inviting premise—a not-IKEA store that’s home to a multitude of portals to strange and hellish dimensions—but it’s one that could have easily been stretched out. It partly works because…well, if you’ve ever been inside IKEA, that’s where your mind naturally goes, but Finna mainly succeeded because Cipri knew the limits of the idea. If it had been a full-length novel, I’m sure it would have been interesting to see the other dimensions hidden within the interdimensional labyrinth of LitenVarld, but the plot couldn’t have sustained itself beyond 100 pages. I’ve seen too many novels where the story has been stretched far too thin, so to have an author know the limits of their story—and have an inventive novella to show for it—was incredibly refreshing.

Finna is the perfect story for right now not just because it has a fun concept, but because it truly nails the kind of corporate neglect that runs rampant in workplaces in this day and age. Even against the threat of a multiverse full of monstrous obstacles (including but not limited to man-eating furniture), Ava and Jules are having to tackle threats leagues beyond their pay grade, and their only compensation is gift cards for a pasta restaurant. Their managers openly tell them that they don’t actually care about the old woman who’s gotten lost in the multiverse—they just want Ava and Jules to find an alternate universe replacement for her so that they can keep up appearances. It’s all so blatantly uncaring and corporate—and it’s all realistic. If some massive chain of stores discovered a wormhole in one of their locations, they would absolutely cover it up until it was no longer possible to do so, especially at the expense of the minimum wage employees. I will say that, although you got hit over the head with this even though the commentary was right there already, Finna’s setup made it perfect for the anticapitalist commentary that Cipri explored—corporations only make it look like they care about you when it looks good for them, and even then, the worker is always dispensable. The execution of this corporate setting was, in the end, what made Finna so successful in that regard—it seems like a real, capitalist response to a fictional problem.

That being said, even though Finna works best as a novella, it did fall victim to some of the pitfalls of novella writing. It’s difficult to develop characters in just over 100 pages, and this worked to the detriment of its protagonists, Ava and Jules. We only knew them from the lens of their situations and their breakup; after finishing the novella, all I knew about Ava was that she a) had a failed relationship with Jules, b) had anxiety and depression, and c) hated her job—nothing much about her personality. This is about as deep as we get with her, and for Jules, we get even less, other than the fact that they’re more reckless and cocky, and for that reason, Ava doesn’t like working with them. The plot was compelling and well-executed enough for me to continue reading the story, but it was so plot and theme-driven that the characters were left in the dust.

Such underdeveloped first drafts of characters meant that the emotional impact of Finna was all but deadened. I got the feeling that I was supposed to feel something when Jules sacrificed themself so that Ava could return to her home dimension, but since I knew so little about them, I never felt much. What Jules needed, perhaps more than a handful of base personality traits, was some kind of motivation; it could also be down to how quickly the second half moves, but their quest through the other dimensions gave us no indication of why they would go from reckless to selfless. It could just be the constraints of the novella format, but I’ve read plenty of novellas longer and shorter than Finna that have been able to establish well-rounded characters with believable motivations, so I’m not sure if there’s much of an excuse for this.

All in all, a novella with a funny, inventive premise and sharp anti-capitalist commentary that was dragged down by its underdeveloped characters. 3.5 stars!

Finna is the first novella in the LitenVerse series, followed by Defekt. Nino Cipri is also the author of the short story collection Homesick: Stories and the forthcoming YA novel Dead Girls Don’t Dream. They have also contributed stories to Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity, Transcendent: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction, and several other anthologies.

Today’s song:

forgot about this song for ages…

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: 7/21/24

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: music for pretentious weirdos (me), music for animation, and music that makes me cry on the regular.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 7/21/24

“Dirt on the Bed” – Cate Le Bon

I came into Pompeii with plenty of curiosity, having finally gotten around to listening to Cate Le Bon after hearing her work producing Wilco’s latest album, Cousin, and her vocal feature on St. Vincent’s “All Born Screaming.” Vaguely remembering the buzz and air of weirdness around Pompeii, I decided to listen to it first.

Pompeii and “Dirt on the Bed” have reminded me of why a spectacular album intro can be both a blessing and a curse. If nothing surpasses the first track, then the rest of the album can never recover—or at least reach the heights of the first song. You can enjoy yourself, but never as much as you did after one song. Just one. It’s a horrible dilemma. Pompeii was fantastic from the start, but after the first four songs, nothing’s quite the same—great, but like my experience with R.E.M.’s Green, nothing tops the back-to-back splendor of the first four songs. And that splendor is set in motion by the crawling intro, “Dirt on the Bed.” As the title suggests, it has the dread of something unclean creeping into the house, like a nun on the scent of sin in a shuttered Catholic girl’s school. An off-kilter, stumbling chorus of brass blooms in moldy bursts, an airborne sickness pulsating through each thrum of the bass. Now I know exactly why St. Vincent chose to work with Le Bon—”Dirt on the Bed” is especially evidence of this, but all I could think of during Pompeii is that it felt like St. Vincent had remained lyrically and instrumentally in Actor, but slowly adorned her music with synths. They’re so similar to each other, down to their folkier, precocious indie beginnings that blossomed into full-on devotion to strangeness. This is modern art pop at some of its best, unabashedly weird and precise in every flourish. “Dirt on the Bed” makes even more sense when you see it as a product of a pandemic-produced album; it paces listlessly, putting on a smile as it tries to scrub every trace of illness and dread from a spotless house. Even as calmly as Le Bon sings each lyric, foreboding seeps through every misty horn blast.

That’s how an album intro is done. After several more listens, I’d say that nothing comes quite as close to it, but “Dirt on the Bed,” “Moderation,” “French Boys,” and “Pompeii” is SUCH an undefeated stretch of songs. Pompeii is worth a listen just for that, as is the album’s very St. Vincent closer, “Wheel.”

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Drunk on All Your Strange New Words – Eddie Robson – “Sound doesn’t go away/In habitual silence/It reinvents the surface/Of everything you touch…”

“Poor Song” – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

…okay, I can’t possibly be normal about this because I cry a little every time I hear it. Either way, there’s an undiluted purity about this song that makes any kind of analysis feel like ten steps in the wrong direction. It’s a paramount example of how easily beauty and simplicity can intertwine, and it cuts more deeply than some songs I know with hundreds of metaphors.

It’s very nearly perfect. Karen O tends to do that.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

I Love This Part – Tillie Walden – quiet and gentle teenage romance.

“It’s A Wonderful Life” – Sparklehorse

One of the first times I remember hearing this song was in the car with my dad, as I come across many a good song. Looking back, since I was so young, it must have been a trip back into Sparklehorse’s catalogue shortly after Mark Linkous’ tragic passing. But as we drove home that night, the windows buffeted by snow or sleet, my dad made a wry remark about the lyrics: “he’s not feeling too good, huh?”

With every emotion comes an infinite number of ways to express it, not just confined to song. There’s the kind of songwriting that outright says that you’re sad, while others cloak it in metaphor. Neither is better than the other, but what Mark Linkous did feels like a category all its own, albeit closer to category #2. Many of the lyrics of “It’s A Wonderful Life” (if there was ever a more sarcastic title) are nonsensical, as his lyrics often are (“I wore a rooster’s blood/When it flew like doves”), but nestled between these impenetrable tidbits, the ones that do make sense land like anvils to the gut. I’ve never heard such sadness and shame articulated in the line “I’m the dog that ate your birthday cake.” Dare I say it’s one of my favorite song lyrics ever? It’s up there, just for such an unadorned, bare line to have such an instantly devastating effect; You can picture that dog, not knowing that it’s not supposed to eat human food and not processing that there’s a child sobbing at their ruined birthday, but being able to detect the shame all the same, but never know the reason why. It cowers, but it doesn’t know why it’s feeling this way. Linkous delivers it with all of that shame, clouded in the atmospheric cage of keyboards that prickle with heat lightning.

With that kind of lyricism, it came as a massive shock that this wasn’t one of his classic pieces of melancholy. In fact, Linkous wrote it as a jab at critics who panned an image of overarching depression over his catalogue: “I got fed up with people in America thinking that my music is morose and depressing and all that. That song is like a “fuck you” to journalists, or people who are not smart enough to see what it is.” And…listen, I’m a guilty party. I still think that Sparklehorse is one of the preeminent purveyors of high-quality sad bastard music, and he had enough strife in his life to justify every tear-jerking lyric. Yet this new light makes the lyrics I thought were nonsensical fall into place. Linkous describes the rest of the song as follows: “In the end, it was more about how every day, you should pick up something, no matter how minuscule or microscopic it is, and when you go to bed, you can say I was glad that I was alive to see that. That’s really what it’s about.” Wearing rooster’s blood when it flew like doves becomes a fleeting, once-in-a-lifetime capture of lightning in a bottle, and being the only one who can ride that horse th’yonder suddenly rings out as a humbly sung badge of honor. It was never sarcastic—it’s a wonderful life. I won’t ever be able to hear “I’m the dog that ate your birthday cake” without the sadness it insinuates, so maybe I’m just as much a part of the problem as the journalists he was taking a shot at, but the main takeaway for me is how versatile of a lyricist he is—if you look closely enough, he makes the absurdities of life both tragic and humbly hopeful.

Either way you absorb “It’s A Wonderful Life,” you can’t deny how otherworldly it sounds. Even years after I first heard and subsequently clung to this song, I can only name maybe one other artist who has ever come close to sounding like this—Lisa Germano, who, whether or not the two knew of each other, has a similar modus operandi of making music that sounded like rotting wood and empty doll’s heads. Lyrically and sonically, almost nobody sounds like Sparklehorse, and I suspect it’ll take a miracle for anyone to come close.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky – Sparklehorse is no “Something,” but the crushing weight of depression and self-loathing comes across similarly.

“Girl from Germany” – Sparks

I’d heard bits and pieces of Sparks before, but like “Future Teenage Cave Artists” last week, I have Horsegirl and their episode of What’s In My Bag? to thank. Love those pretentious (affectionate) weirdos.

It seems I’ve only gotten through one strand in the massive haystack in terms of the INCREDIBLY prolific career of Sparks, which started in 1967 (under several different names) and had its most recent entry last year. Edgar Wright made a documentary about their musical exploits, and the list of artists they’ve influenced seems to span an infinite number of genres, all the way up to Horsegirl in 2023. So, having only heard two of their songs (including this one): hats off to you guys, really! Being that flagrantly weird for almost six decades is nothing short of impressive, and I can’t help but admire their musicianship in that regard.

“Girl from Germany” scratches my eternal itch for early-’70s glam rock, although it’s not all glam—it’s more glam in the sense that Brian Eno was glam at the same time, not quite like Bowie or Bolan were glam. Squeaky-clean, warm guitars as far as the eye can see and a healthy dose of theatricality cloaks this track make for a song that’s deliciously meticulous in every aspect. Russell Mael affects high-pitched vocals that wouldn’t be out of place in The Rocky Horror Picture Show while Ron Mael’s keyboard melodies glitter like light reflected off a glass of wine. And like Brian Eno, they used such a theatrical machine to touch on touchy subjects—in this case, in the climate of the early ’70s, bringing home a German girl to relatives who were mired in the horrors of World War II: “Well, the car I drive is parked outside, it’s German-made/They resent that less than the people who are German-made.” Even if every affectation is theatrical to the core, it’s still a prejudice that resurfaces today—assuming that any given person is an extension of the government and horrors of their homeland, and having to grapple with the cultural fallout of such a simple gesture of love.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Translation State – Ann Leckie – cross-cultural confusion and characters with heart.

“Hideaway” – The Olivia Tremor Control

Having only heard one song (this one) from Black Foliage: Animation Music, I’ve already logged it into my slipshod mental list of album titles that perfectly describe the music they contain. The Olivia Tremor Control have always been masters of musical density, making soundscapes that unfold like intricate pop-up books, each layer of noise a painted paper cutout in an endless jungle. “Hideaway,” so far, is the pinnacle of that density; with each successive strain of woozy, turn-of-the-century homage to ’60s psychedelia, you’re pulled into a lush forest of plants that unfold just enough to let the tiniest slivers of light through. It’s not just the black foliage that hits the mark so fittingly—the “animation music,” as Will Cullen Hart called it, is “all the stuff floating around…To me, that’s what [animation music] is: sort-of a sound and space, personified—just flying around to greet you in a friendly way.” All at once, the xylophone chimes and trumpet blasts give “Hideaway” the feel of both the colored-pencil animations in Fantastic Planet and the bouncing characters in Schoolhouse Rock!, a papery and breathless expedition into a darkened forest of cartoonish proportions.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Always Human – Ari North – simple, stylized art with vibrant colors—perfect for animation music.

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!