Category: Book Review Tuesday

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Book Review Tuesday (7/14/26) – Machine (White Space, #2)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Thankfully, after last week’s disappointment, we’ve got something to save the track record for Disability Pride Month. I started Elizabeth Bear’s White Space trilogy earlier this year, and I knew I wanted a physical copy of book 2. It’s one of the great joys in life when a sequel is better than the first book—and Ancestral Night was already a 4.5-star read for me, so this was huge! Machine was a fantastic step up for a series that’s already a cut above the rest.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Machine (White Space, #2) – Elizabeth Bear

Dr. Brookllyn Jens is a special kind of doctor. Her patients are usually aliens, and her status as an emergency specialist means that her job description tends to involve having to jump out of spaceships. It’s already a job that keeps her on the edge. But when Dr. Jens and her crew discover two ships that have been abandoned for thousands of years, they uncover a mystery with layers upon layers of disastrous implications. With a strange, antiquated AI, an entire human crew in cryosleep, and a potential conspiracy on their hands, Dr. Jens and her crew must race against the clock to make sure that everybody makes it out alive.

TW/CW: ableism, misogyny, medical content, xenophobia, violence, murder

Genuinely, my sole problem with this novel is the title. Elizabeth Bear thought out this intricate and complex space opera world full of thousands of aliens and unique space travel, and couldn’t think of a more memorable title than Machine? I mean, yeah. There sure are Machines. Lots of ’em. But come on, really.

As much as I enjoyed Haimey’s story in Ancestral Night, I really think that making the White Space series several collected companion novels was the right move. It expands the intricate world that Elizabeth Bear has crafted in so many exciting ways that were only possible through the eyes of a different cast of characters. I loved the ways that the Synarche and all of the different species within it were fleshed out. Bear’s writing is as sharp as ever—her voice is so witty and hilarious, but she also knows just how to stick the landing when it comes to the more climactic or serious moments. The pacing was top-notch, especially considering that Machine is nearly 500 pages long—I blew through hundreds of pages at a time, and Bear never lost me.

I absolutely adored Dr. Jens as a protagonist, and Bear’s willingness to let her protagonists be messy yet lovable people made her shine. Dr. Jens has such a dry sense of humor, and her wry observations about the world around her made Machine such an entertaining read. But beyond that, I loved her continuous self-reflection—about the ideas she’s constructed about herself, but also about her work and the world around her. The supporting cast was so vibrant and lovable—it was a treat to see Cheerilaq again, first off, but all of the characters were so delightful and added a real human (and syster) authenticity to Core General’s staff. Sometimes your coworker gets on your nerves for no discernible reason, and they’re also a massive cetacean-like being getting wheeled around in a massive tank. On that subject, I loved all of the new Systers that Bear introduces. My creature design brain predictably became that meme of the dog with the propeller beanie and the giant lollipop seeing all of the truly alien aliens that populated the Synarche. But Bear went beyond good creature design and into crafting memorable, multilayered characters, which is what makes her space opera stand out in the end.

In particular, the expansion of the AI and robots in the Synarche was one of the most intriguing aspects of the world that Bear discusses in Machine. The whole plotline with Helen Alloy was one of the most well-executed. I love how Bear interrogates the objectification of women and how sci-fi has historically translated this into female-presenting robots. The visceral discomfort that Dr. Jens has that Helen was specifically created to have a hypersexualized, feminine form felt was like seeing the sun peer through the clouds after decades of weird men writing all kinds of messed-up sex-bots. It’s treated with the appropriate level of disgust—both on Helen and Dr. Jens’s part. Helen’s manipulation also ends up being vital to the later twist, and her entire arc of deconstructing the lies that she was programmed with was handled with such tenderness. Beyond the robots, I think that thread of treating people who have been brought up with hateful ideologies and not immediately dismissing those with different opinions was one of the best aspects of Machine; Bear’s insistence that people—human, alien, or AI—are not inherently bad, only victims of harmful ideas, was so necessary.

Bear’s take on disability in a sci-fi context was also such a respectful and well-researched one! She listed off several sensitivity readers in the acknowledgements, and their work paid off—for someone who seems to be non-disabled, by all accounts, this might be one of the most caring representations of a disabled person and their struggles in sci-fi I’ve seen by a non-disabled author. Dr. Jens has a chronic pain disorder, and she has a special exo-suit that manages some of her pain, but not all of it—sci-fi tech still has limitations in the far, far future. She still aches and gets physically taxed from her daring missions. Granted, I’m not chronically ill, but it felt like Bear paid so much attention to how Dr. Jens’s symptoms would present and how her high-stakes profession would affect it. Additionally, there’s a lot of talk about how disability is handled in the future; there was lots of discussion of “rightminding,” a process that, among other things, mitigates the effects of some mental illnesses. It would’ve been so easy to just slap it on as a cure-all technology, but Bear’s approach was one that I rarely see in sci-fi. It’s not necessarily “disability isn’t cured,” but it’s handled on a case-by-case basis, there’s an understanding that different kinds of disabled people have different needs and opinions about how they want to live with their disabilities with the technology available. This rejection of the one-size-fits-all approach to disability was a breath of fresh air, and wasn’t afraid to get into the nuance of how disabled people live their lives.

Disability wasn’t the only issue that gets dealt with in a refreshing amount of nuance. Bear was not afraid to get into the weeds with this novel, and it made my reading experience so much better. Machine, more so than its predecessor, gets into how a utopia and utopian ideas can be twisted into something sinister. It all feels very Ursula K. LeGuin—the Synarche is without a doubt an ambiguous utopia like The Dispossessed. (First off, I liked that Bear interrogates the ethics of “rightminding” targeting potentially “dangerous ideologies,” and how that ends up being decidedly non-utopian.) I appreciated that Bear discusses how well-intentioned utopias can be co-opted into vehicles for hatred, but also how that revelation wracks the people who genuinely believed in this utopia—people like Dr. Jens. Her arc in having faith in her hospital and the Synarche was so human—her entire reality and faith in the organization she devoted her life to is messily upended. But the realization that she comes to—that you can take the good work you wanted to do and the faith in your fellow people outside of corrupt organizations and do your own work—was one that feels so vital. I also loved the thematic potential of the infectious meme—not unlike the spread of a hateful ideology—that is treated as an infection that has to be weaned out with attention and care. Bear’s depictions of that crushing realization and how Dr. Jens and her coworkers pick up the pieces was so heartfelt, and a very potent message in this day and age.

All in all, a spectacular companion to Ancestral Night that expanded Elizabeth Bear’s masterfully crafted space opera universe with pulse-pounding action and heart. 5 stars!

Machine is the second book in the White Space trilogy, a series of companion novels set in the same universe; it is also includes Ancestral Night (book 1) and Folded Sky (book 3). Elizabeth Bear is also the author of several other series, including the New Amsterdam series (New Amsterdam, Seven for a Secret, The White City, Ad Eternum, and Garrett Investigates), the Jacob’s Ladder trilogy (Dust, Sanction, and Grail) and many others

Today’s song:

still going through my mom’s records from the ’80s. this remains peak.

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 (7/7/26) – Climate of Chaos

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I wanted to kick off Disability Pride Month with something positive, but unfortunately, I don’t think that it’ll be the case. Whoops. They can’t all be bangers. I was intrigued by the concept of Climate of Chaos, and excited by the premise of a disabled main character navigating a dystopian world. Unfortunately, Climate of Chaos was not the Hunger Games successor that it purported itself to be.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Climate of Chaos – Cassandra Newbould

Fox LaRosa lives in the climate-ravaged wilderness of what was once Seattle. While the rich get to live in luxurious, climate-proof domes made by the infamous Aegis Corp, people like Fox and her sister Rabbit live on the edge of death—made worse by the mounting medical debt that Fox has been carrying ever since she became disabled. To make matters worse, a strange new virus is creeping its way up north, and if it hits Fox and her commune, it could spell disaster. But when Rabbit is kidnapped on a routine heist for medical supplies, Fox must fight her way into the rotten heart of Aegis Corp in order to find her sister—and figure out what Aegis wants with her.

TW/CW: medical trauma, violence, pandemic/epidemic, ableism, loss of loved ones, police brutality, loss of loved ones

The other day, I was watching BookLeo’s retrospective on the YA dystopian craze of the late 2000’s-early 2010’s, and she mentioned that one the most common plot elements throughout the books is that the inciting incident is that the protagonist has to find their missing sibling. I never even considered that, but it’s everywhere. If anything, Climate of Chaos is proof that the trope is alive and kicking today. It’s a foolproof inciting incident. Pour one out for all of the missing brothers and sisters that get put through the wringer for the plot in YA dystopias.

As a whole, I was disappointed by Climate of Chaos, but I’d like to acknowledge the positives, because there were some great aspects of this novel. We’re at least a decade out from the huge wave of Hunger Games copycats, but the issue that a lot of people had with them was that their dystopian worlds tended to be removed from real forms of oppression and didn’t make sense. Climate of Chaos, however, grounds its dystopia in two very real-world issues: climate change and medical debt. Newbould did an excellent job of going into all manner of ways that climate change could negatively impact our world in the future, from the more obvious weather changes to the spread of new diseases, the latter of which becomes very relevant to the plot. The discussions around medical debt and the poor treatment of disabled people under our healthcare system were very timely, and it pointed out that conditions for many disabled people are as dystopian today as they are in this fictional, far-flung future. And while I had my issues with Fox as a character, it’s so wonderful to see a disabled girl kicking butt in a YA book like this. Her cane being able to extend out of her belt and fold back into itself was indisputably badass, as was the fact that the cane had an extendable blade at the end.

Aside from those points, Climate of Chaos was unfortunately weak. There was some serious work that needed to be done with the characters. I hate to say it, but I think the only reason that Fox stands out from other teen dystopian protagonists is the fact that she’s disabled. Her entire personality is that unnecessarily gritty, edgy persona that you get when you’re trying to make a character sound “hardened,” to the point that it was overexaggerated. Half of her dialogue sounded straight out of Zack Snyder’s DC movies. It got old quickly. Apart from that, most of the characters were hardly characterized beyond a few base traits, and some—even the main characters—were only distinguished by the fact that Fox is friends with them. Cely at least had a distinct personality, but Asher and Eamon, despite being some of the central characters, didn’t get much beyond “boys who are friends with Fox.” Towards the end, there was also a faint indication that Asher and Fox had some sort of romantic chemistry, which felt forced, but more importantly, completely unearned—their relationship is a complete plateau from the beginning to the end of the book, and there was nothing that convinced me that there was any sort of romance brewing between them. It was all just the absolute bare minimum of character work.

The worldbuilding was largely hit or miss. I think Newbould did a decent job of establishing how the world (particularly Seattle) got to where it is in Climate of Chaos, and the structure of the different rungs of society made sense. The themes of inequality between disabled people and poor people were the only things keeping Aegis Corp from falling into the “the government is bad, but we’re not going to tell you anything except for that it’s bad” trap, but it was pretty close. Without spoiling, I think the reveal about Aegis Corp and the Vi (yes, that’s what they call the virus 🫩 peak YA dystopian cornball terminology lives, folks) was the most nonsensical part of the plot; with the established plot about the Harvest House, I feel like that erased all of the rationale for why Aegis Corp used the Vi in the way they did. At a certain point, there’s things that don’t even make sense for a comically mustache-twirling fictional government to do, just because the stuff that they’re doing would be such an unnecessary and unjustifiable drain on their resources.

Ultimately, I think the biggest issue with Climate of Chaos was that I never once felt like Fox or any of the other main characters were truly in danger. Despite them undergoing the notoriously dangerous Storm Runner trials with a ridiculously slim survival rate, all of the main characters came out without a scratch. Seriously! The main characters had a laughable amount of plot armor, and after about the halfway point, I just gave up on caring about any of them—Fox, Asher, Eamon, Cely, Trew, and all of the other main characters are completely fine, even though they’ve been exposed to a deadly virus, been in danger of being killed by their bloodthirsty teammates, and were almost gunned down by their Storm Runner superiors. Eamon is inside a factory that nearly explodes, and he comes out unscathed…give me a break. It just reeked of Newbould liking them too much and refusing to let any of them even get the smallest scrape on their knees. I didn’t even care that Fox had been taken to the Harvest House, because I knew by then that she’d come out the other side completely fine—and guess what? SHE DID. Along with the worldbuilding, this is what made me lose faith that any of the characters were actually in danger in this supposedly dystopian world.

A related sidenote: I don’t have chronic pain, so take this with a grain of salt, but other than Fox having to use her cane in a few situations, wouldn’t she be in excruciating pain during something as taxing as the Storm Runner trials? It’d be exhausting even for a nondisabled person. Granted, I remember an instance of her sneaking painkillers, but I feel like even that wouldn’t erase the pain of having to fight a bunch of other teenagers to the death day-in and day-out.

All in all, a YA dystopia that had its heart in the right place, but failed to make its dystopian world fully believable. 2.5 stars.

Climate of Chaos is a standalone, but Cassandra Newbould is also the author of Things I’ll Never Say and the editor of the anthology Every Body Shines: Sixteen Stories about Living Fabulously Fat.

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 (6/30/26) – Where Sleeping Girls Lie

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles, and if you’re a fellow Coloradan, happy Election Day! Get your ballots in by 7 pm today for them to be counted! (And preferably cast your vote for Julie Gonzales for Senate—we need somebody truly progressive, not another AIPAC-backed old white dude in office.)

we don’t need hickenlooper anymore, get him outta here…

I was a fan of Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s Ace of Spades back when it first came out in 2021. Even though it’d been almost five years since I’d read a book of hers, I figured I’d give Where Sleeping Girls Lie a shot. Although it was by no means perfect, Where Sleeping Girls Lie was still a tense and fast-paced mystery.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Where Sleeping Girls Lie – Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

Sade Hussein is ready to start over—no matter the cost. Freshly an orphan and homeschooled all her life, she’s enrolled in Alfred Noble Academy, a cutthroat boarding school where only the most privileged earn a spot. She has her reservations, but she finds comfort in Elizabeth, her roommate and fellow outsider. But when Elizabeth goes missing and the faculty of ANA doesn’t seem to care, Sade knows that the school has something sinister lurking beneath the surface—and she’ll do anything to expose it.

TW/CW: rape/sexual assault themes, suicide, animal death, substance abuse, murder, loss of loved ones

WARNING: this review contains spoilers! Proceed with caution if you want to read this book and haven’t yet.

It’s been almost five years since I read Ace of Spaces. My tastes have inevitably shifted a bit. But it says something that Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s writing feels just as sharp, even though I’m no longer in the target audience. Where Sleeping Girls Lie is a timely mystery that kept me hooked!

Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé has still got it. Where Sleeping Girls Lie is, for the most part, both excellently plotted and paced. This book is just over 400 pages (on my Kindle edition, at least), and I managed to blow through it in only two days. (Yes, I know I’m a fast reader, but for me, that’s still saying something.) Every beat of the mystery of Elizabeth’s mystery—and the sinister underbelly of ANA that gets exposed in the process—was meticulously planned, and I loved how the back-and-forth between Sade and Baz developed along with the clues they discovered. It was so grippingly written, and Àbíké-Íyímídé did such an excellent job of spreading the mystery and reveals out in a logical but still fast-paced way, giving enough breathing room between reveals to keep me hooked for the whole novel.

I also really enjoyed the dynamic between Sade and the other characters. Although there were times when Àbíké-Íyímídé’s writing felt a little too YA and her humor didn’t always land, she did a fantastic job writing the effortless rapport between all of the main characters. The dynamic between Sade and Baz was sweet, but I think I enjoyed the slow-burn romance between Sade and Persephone the most; in an age group where it’s so easy to write halfhearted insta-love, Àbíké-Íyímídé’s gradual, will-they-won’t-they dynamic between the two girls was one that I was rooting for from the start. As with her other novels, there’s diversity aplenty—it’s always so cool to see protagonists like Sade (Black, Muslim, sapphic, and has depression and C-PTSD) in the spotlight, and the diversity in this novel felt so effortless and natural. And as Where Sleeping Girls Lie deals with all manner of slimy, predatory characters, I enjoyed the nuance that Àbíké-Íyímídé applied to the many gross characters (especially Jude and August)—they weren’t cardboard villains, but realistic manipulators who had built up charming exteriors and skirted around the blame for their reprehensible actions.

That brings me to the main theme of Where Sleeping Girls Lie; I put trigger/content warnings at the top of all my reviews, but I would highly suggest keeping them in mind before reading this book. This novel deals a lot with rape culture, sexual assault, and how systemic misogyny protects powerful men from ever facing the consequences of their actions. While this novel is technically a murder mystery, there isn’t a singular “villain” to pin the crime on: the villain is the system, which I think is the best way to do justice to this issue. The resolution isn’t neatly tied in a bow, and all of the bad guys don’t get paraded off to jail; while Sade and the others get some semblance of closure, I liked that Àbíké-Íyímídé didn’t shy away from the fact that more often than not, rapists and misogynists are allowed by our patriarchal system to get off scot-free. Sade also has depression and C-PTSD, and while I can’t speak to the accuracy of the representation, I appreciated Àbíké-Íyímídé’s depiction of how such traumatic events can become deeply embedded into a person like her. It’s a biting indictment of rape culture that pulls no punches—exactly as it should be.

However, Where Sleeping Girls Lie faltered in the handling of its twists. Ultimately, what happens in the next two paragraphs is the main reason this didn’t get the full four stars from me. From the start, there’s the matter of Sade being an unreliable narrator; while Àbíké-Íyímídé maintains this for a solid amount of time, it feels like she all but abandoned the twist with Jamila until the last minute. We get Sade’s hallucinations/dreams about Jamila early on in the book, which were excellent in terms of building up the eerie atmosphere. However, they’re then completely forgotten, and there’s no further indication of Jamila’s role in the story until we get the reveal about her—to say that it’s put on the backburner is an understatement. It’s like Àbíké-Íyímídé completely forgot about her existence and then had to scramble to include her during the Big Reveal (with a capital B). I’m all for a surprise twists, but it feels like after the first 30 pages of the book, there’s hardly any indication that Sade has something that drastic to hide. I find it hard to believe that Sade didn’t even have a handful of fleeting memories of her recently dead twin sister throughout this entire thing.

The same can be said about the twist about Francis at the end of Where Sleeping Girls Lie. I get that the message was supposed to be that the “culprit” of the mystery was meant to be the system of patriarchy/rape culture/misogyny, and I appreciated that choice. But the twist about Jude being offhandedly killed by Francis out of nowhere just didn’t make much sense. Like with Jamila, it felt like Àbíké-Íyímídé had built up this intricate web for the Fishermen plot, and then forgot that there was supposed to be a culprit to the murder, and just threw a dart at one of the more unlikable characters just so that the more nuanced characters didn’t have to take the fall. The rest of the mystery of Where Sleeping Girls Lie was so well plotted that it just felt cheap to pin it on a relatively inconsequential character and move on.

All in all, a gripping YA mystery that grabbed my attention, but failed to clinch the full four stars for the handling of its twists. 3.75 stars!

Where Sleeping Girls Lie is a standalone, but Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé has also released Much Ado About Persephone, a short story set after the events of the novel. She is also the author of Ace of Spades, The Heirs, the co-author of Four Eids and a Funeral (with Adiba Jaigirdar), and has contributed to several short story anthologies, including The White Guy Dies First: 13 Stories of Fear and Power, Doctor Who: Origin Stories, Black Joy, and more.

Today’s song:

happy end of pride month. god, I love britpop.

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 (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 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 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 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 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!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (5/19/26) – Silver Under Nightfall

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I read a handful of Rin Chupeco’s books in high school. I liked them for the most part, but I think I just lost interest eventually. Fast forward a few years, and I found out that they’d written another series for adults, and the premise hooked me. However, it seems like Chupeco’s writing doesn’t hold up now that I’m older. Silver Under Nightfall was just ridiculous in all the wrong ways.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Silver Under Nightfall (Silver Under Nightfall, #1) – Rin Chupeco

Remington Prendergast is a Reaper—a highly-trained bounty hunter who specializes in the most dangerous quarry: vampires. Even with his talents, the rumors surrounding his possibly vampire heritage have alienated him from his colleagues. His father, the Duke of Valenbonne, has been desperate to make his powers so great that they overshadow the rumors, but he’s failed. But when strange, deadly vampires, the likes of which the kingdom has never seen, begin to spread across the kingdom, Remy’s only choice is to turn to a pair of enigmatic vampires to solve the case—and risk being drawn into their seductive web.

TW/CW: blood, gore, sexual content, loss of loved ones, pedophilia, vomit, emotional abuse

I haven’t read a Rin Chupeco book since I was about 17. I really should’ve kept it that way. Silver Under Nightfall sounded fun and gothic enough from the premise, but this novel was bordered on being a disaster. It genuinely boggles my mind that this book has such a positive average rating on both Goodreads and The Storygraph. I endured 500 pages of this (probably should’ve DNF’d it), but now I have the evidence to hate from an educated stance…

Before I get into all my gripes, I’ll give Chupeco credit for the handful of things that they did well. Though it didn’t go in the direction I would’ve liked it to go, I loved the vampire murder mystery/thriller plot, and the genetically engineered monsters and subsequent fights were quite fun. There were moments where they nailed the gothic atmosphere, and there were a handful of solid quotes here and there. But unfortunately, these elements, despite being key to the premise, weren’t delivered on nearly enough, which is surprising, since Silver Under Nightfall is over 500 pages long. Unfortunately, most of that 500 pages is a poorly-written mess.

The last book of Chupeco’s that I read was The Ever Cruel Kingdom, which I honestly forgot about completely, other than the vague sensation of it being entertaining, but ultimately finishing it just to finish it. Not a great endorsement, I know. But even at that age, I had the sense that it felt overwritten, that there were random metaphors tripping over themselves. Unfortunately, that quality increased tenfold in Silver Under Nightfall. To Chupeco’s credit, their writing has some fun moments of being campy and gothic. In the end, they were just trying way too hard to be gothic. This resulted in so many sentences with nonsensical structure and metaphors that went on far longer than they humanly should have. At the worst points, the writing was so deliberately obtuse that I could barely get any sense of the setting or world beyond it. (Worldbuilding? Who is she?) It was just dense and unwieldy, and did very little to enhance the atmosphere.

Speaking of trying too hard, Chupeco’s dialogue was the worst victim of the above prose problem. It was terrible. All of the characters oscillated between talking like 15-year-old edgelords and fictional Victorian nobles, even though they’re all meant to be adults. The Victorian noble bit was painfully overwritten, carrying over the same problem of Chupeco’s floundering attempt at making Silver Under Nightfall gothic; again, a lot of the dialogue was stuffy at best, grammatically nonsensical at worst. On the other end of the spectrum, you have characters like Remy, who Chupeco spends 500 pages desperately trying to convince you that he’s funny.

Below is an actual quote from the book:

“…I’ve never infected anyone, if you don’t count my dry wit—”

Oh my God, free me from this prison. 90% of the humor in Silver Under Nightfall is 2017 Tumblr humor partially filtered through quasi-historical nobleman speak; like the specially-engineered vampire-creatures in the novel, it’s an unholy abomination that shouldn’t exist. And Chupeco really, really, really wants you to think that it’s funny, so much so that it supersedes most other elements that are important in a novel, like…oh, worldbuilding? Character development? No, apparently what matters most is making sure that the reader knows, beyond all reasonable doubt, that your character has a dry sense of humor. And he doesn’t. He, like most of this book, is painfully unfunny.


This brings me to the characters. I think the fundamental problem was that Chupeco seemed hellbent on making them as likable as possible, which in the novel, translated to them having virtually no flaws. We’re beaten over the head with the prospect that Remy is a poor widdle baby and nobody likes him because people think his mommy was a vampire but he’s also SO TALENTED and SPECIAL and EDGY and COOL. Textually, we get very little evidence to support this, other than his overlong monologues and the treatment he gets from his father. No character development, no revelations that aren’t external—stuff just happens to him, and Chupeco just paints him like this sad, wet puppy that got left out in the rain. Show me more interactions between him and the other Reapers! Give me some actual internal reflection and genuine grappling with his identity at the very least, dammit! As for the others, there’s not much to say about them…which is to say that most of them had one character trait each. Malekh and Xioadan were sexy, the Duke was a Bad, Bad Guy, and there were…a few others? I guess? Most of them got taken care of in the bloodbath towards the end. Silver Under Nightfall was just a classic case of a main character that was unrealistically overpowered and emo, and then all of the others were just window dressing (or threesome fodder).

However, I think the fundamental problem with the characters in Silver Under Nightfall was that Chupeco refused to give them any nuance. Remy, for how much of an edgelord he was purported to be, was purely good. Malekh and Xioadan were the same way—they were completely pure, despite the “oooh the evil vampires are seducing me ooooh 😏🫦” plot. There was a revelation at the end that could’ve complicated the relationship between Malekh and Remy in a super interesting way, but Chupeco immediately shuts it down in favor of Malekh being completely pure. Of course, all of the bad guys are completely bad. I wouldn’t even let this kind of black and white writing slide in a YA novel. It was such a lazy, uninteresting way to write these characters, especially when the novel touts itself as having all of these morally gray characters. None of the specialest, most precious little guys can have any sort of nuance or depth, I guess.

All in all, a bloated mess of a vampire novel with unwieldy writing and even worse character work. I feel like I’ve been drained…by Colin Robinson, maybe. 2 stars.

Silver Under Nightfall is the first in the Silver Under Nightfall duology, which concluded with Court of Wanderers. Chupeco is also the author of the Bone Witch series (The Bone Witch, The Heart Forger, and The Shadowglass), the Never Tilting World series (The Never Tilting World and The Ever Cruel Kingdom), the A Hundred Names for Magic trilogy (An Unreliable Magic, Wicked As You Wish, and The World’s End), The Sacrifice, and several other novels for teens and adults.

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 (5/12/26) – Interstellar Megachef

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

It’s funny that I should be reading/reviewing Interstellar Megachef when I am, because just a week ago, I was talking to my older brother about how you sometimes have to wade through the most cornball book covers and titles known to man to find good cozy fiction sometimes. Different strokes, I guess, but oh my God, this book cover is painfully corny. (And mismarketed, but I’ll talk more about that). But ultimately, it was mostly worth the gambit: although it had some structural issues, it was a solid novel about food, love, and immigration…in space, of course.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Interstellar Megachef – Lavanya Lakshminarayan

Saraswati Kaveri is determined to prove herself. After running away from her family on Earth, she upends her life to immigrate to the famed planet Primus—and earn a spot on its most popular cooking show, Interstellar Megachef. It’s not an easy feat, especially when the humans of Primus are deeply prejudiced against Earthlings, who they see as backwards and violent. But when Saras’s plans go awry, she has a chance encounter with Serenity Ko, a disgraced tech developer who might have just the solution for her to redeem herself—and her cooking.

TW/CW: xenophobia/racism, racial slurs (fictional), substance abuse

First off: Interstellar Megachef is mismarketed. Cornball cover art aside, the Interstellar Megachef aspect of the book is fairly understated. This isn’t a spoiler, but Saras gets disqualified in the first episode of the show—and this happens about a quarter into the novel. (However, Interstellar Megachef comes back as a plot point, so it’s not entirely absent from the plot afterwards.) So I’m assuming that it was marketing reasons that gave this novel its title and tagline. So fair warning, if you’re expecting the entire novel to be food-centric, I’d suggest that you dial back your expectations.

Where Interstellar Megachef succeeds is its powerful commentary on the experience of being an immigrant. To me, good cozy sci-fi succeeds when it retains the low stakes, but doesn’t hold back on discussing whatever issues it seeks to tackle; Lakshminarayan does this to great success. Saras’s experiences as an Earthling immigrant to Primus were a biting indictment of how we treat immigrants, from the outright racism and xenophobia to the more subtle micro-aggressions that they’re taught to simply put up with. The labor that Saras has to do just to be marginally accepted by her Primian peers was poignant, and it spoke to the limits of “acceptance” that mainstream society often has for immigrants: she’s only valuable to them if she’s able to serve a purpose to them. But Saras’s commitment to going against the grain and staying true to her culture gave this novel a poignant, beating heart that propelled its narrative skyward.

Interstellar Megachef also boasts a particularly vibrant sci-fi world. Of course, there are elements that didn’t quite make me suspend my disbelief; I couldn’t quite believe that Earthling humans were more discriminated against than the nigh-incomprehensible mecha tentacle aliens, but that was necessary to the plot, so I get why that was a thing. (Also, the Primian naming convention of every adult being named after the Nine Virtues was okay in concept, but confusing logistically, when you have at least four characters with the same first name per virtue.) Lakshminarayan’s descriptions of this futuristic world were so bright and lived-in, and I truly felt immersed into this neon, intergalactic future for humanity. The aliens were fun, but I feel like their role in society was underutilized, especially when the themes of prejudice and marginalization are concerned. That being said, Lakshminarayan often delivered this worldbuilding in portions that went on for three paragraphs in some cases, which unceremoniously took away from the main narrative. All of the detail and hard work was there, but integrating smoothly into the narrative was a different story, unfortunately.

However, my biggest issue with Interstellar Megachef was the pacing. I’m used to some slowness when it’s cozy sci-fi that we’re talking about, but there were some parts of the novel that seriously dragged. We take so many detours into characters that aren’t central to the main plot, and they don’t serve much of a purpose—they did almost nothing to enrich the plot or the characters. They just seemed like vehicles for Lakshminarayan to do some even more unwieldy exposition for the world (like the three-paragraph-long dumps weren’t enough…). And it’s not as though the book was too short to cut some parts—my paperback edition is around 450 pages. Did we need a whole chapter about politicians negotiating with an alien species that we don’t even see afterwards? There was definitely some trimming needed. The issues with the pacing don’t end here; with all of these detours, it took away so much from the focal plot, making the development of the main characters feel rushed by comparison.

We took so much time on said detours that the romance between Saras and Serenity was rendered rushed and unbelievable. However, part of that was due to Lakshminarayan not giving them much chemistry at all from the start. I just wasn’t convinced of them being a couple, even towards the end of the book. They just didn’t seem compatible at all—and that’s not even counting some of the terrible things that Serenity does to “prank” Saraswati that realistically should’ve been dealbreakers. (Saras!! Get out of there, girl! You deserve better!) By the time they got together at the end of the novel, I was entirely unconvinced of them as a happy couple. It was just so forced from the start, like a bungled attempt at enemies-to-lovers banter.

All in all, a solid stab at a cozy space-opera, full of potent commentary and a vibrant world, but lacking in plot and some believability. 3.5 stars!

Interstellar Megachef is the first book in the Flavour Hacker series, followed by Intergalactic Feast. Lakshminarayan is also the author of The Ten Percent Thief.

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!