Category: Book Review Tuesday

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (1/7/25) – The Infinity Particle

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

First book review of 2025, and so far, the best book I’ve read this month! Granted, we’re only a week into the month, but it still counts for something, right? loved Mooncakes, which Wendy Xu illustrated, but I had no idea until recently that she had published a solo graphic novel—and a sci-fi one! What resulted was an incredibly emotional read to start the year off with: robot romance and explorations of how relationships make the universe work.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Infinity Particle – Wendy Xu

Clementine Chang is headed for Mars. In the distant future, it’s a place of peace and industry, and it’s precisely the place that Clem wants to start her new life. A clever inventor, Clem has a knack for working with AI. She hopes to continue her education under Dr. Marcella Lin, a legendary AI engineer who inspired her work. But Dr. Lin is not what she seems—and she’s hiding a secret from the scientific world: a lifelike, humanoid AI that she refers to as her son. His name is Kye, and he yearns for a life outside of the one that Dr. Lin programmed for him. As Clem gets acquainted with him, she discovers that Dr. Lin’s intentions in making him were not as noble as she once thought—and that she may be falling in love with her former hero’s creation.

art by Wendy Xu (p. 150)

TW/CW: emotional abuse (past/present)

You know me. I’m a sucker for a good Frankenstein story. Oh, so you brought a conscious being into existence, expected it to be completely obedient to you and your whims, and didn’t expect anything to go wrong? Surely this will not have a domino effect of consequences…

That being said, The Infinity Particle isn’t just a Frankenstein story. We’ve been inundated with stories about AI and the ethics of giving robots human-like consciousnesses since day one of sci-fi’s conception (back to Frankenstein), but The Infinity Particle does what many of those stories try and fail to do: make the story human. It weaves both engineering and the complicated legacies of familial trauma into a story that is ultimately about relationships: that of parents and children, but also of young lovers. It’s a story of breaking cycles and of forging something newer and better out of their ashes. All of it is worth your time.

Wendy Xu’s vision of Mars in the distant future is one that I want to live in, which isn’t something I often say about sci-fi novels. The world of The Infinity Particle is a cozy, comforting one. In spite of the more emotional moments of the story, Xu’s setting is one you can get lost in. Rendered in a pastel color palette that’s easy on the eyes, it’s a world full of greenhouses, cafés, and cobblestone paths. Here, Mars is the perfect place for a museum date—except here, the museum features all manner of robots from bygone centuries. Although there are ethical conflicts with some of the AIs (this forms the central conflict of the novel), none of Xu’s AIs are malicious creatures—they’re all in the form of cuddly cats or owls, and in the case of Clem’s custom companion, a cat-moth hybrid. (SENA!! WE LOVE SENA!!) It’s a world I was eager to escape to, and one that I could dwell in forever.

Clem’s motivations were part of what made this story stand out. As she begins to dig deeper into Dr. Lin’s true motives for creating Kye, the way her former hero treats her AI creation begins to mirror how she was treated as a child; the emotional abuse from her mother is very similar to the emotional abuse by Dr. Lin to Kye. The Infinity Particle is a fantastic example of how very far-fetched, sci-fi concept can be used as incredibly emotional metaphors. We have Clem, who is a clone of her mother and was raised to live out the dreams that her mother could not, and Kye, an AI made to replace Dr. Lin’s son and live out her fantasies. Admittedly, the clone part was very on the nose, but the way that Xu delivered with care, giving The Infinity Particle an undeniable heart. In part, The Infinity Particle is a story of how trauma always echoes into the present, and how it can create ripples that both tear apart and rebuild relationships with others.

That shared trauma is part of what made the romance between Clem and Kye one that I was rooting for from page 1. Not only were they the most adorable couple (museum dates! Philosophical conversations in greenhouses!), their shared connection allowed them to help each other in ways that made the relationship blossom. Clem had experience with having to escape from the same kind of emotional abuse that Kye was undergoing, and as they realized that connection, their relationship deepened. However, it wasn’t just that aspect that made their relationship so lovable. Their chemistry was some of the best I’ve read in a YA novel in a long time—they were both such curious and sensitive people, and that combined curiosity not only drove the plot, but the course of their romance. Every shared moment was sweet, but never saccharine—The Infinity Particle was just a warm hug (and a kiss on the cheek) in so many ways, this being one of the most prominent.

However, even though Dr. Lin was objectively in the wrong, I appreciated the way that The Infinity Particle humanized her; never once were her actions condoned, but in the end, she wasn’t a purely evil person—she was a person who slipped so far into grief that she failed to realize how she was treating those around her. She did horrible things that could not be undone, but she was also capable of healing. It’s an incredibly difficult line to toe between acknowledging a character’s humanity and acknowledging that their actions were inexcusable; most media gets it wrong (I am looking directly at Encanto), but in the short time that was given to this plot, Xu did a graceful job of hitting that balance. Dr. Lin did some unspeakably terrible things, but deep down, she is still human. My one (minor) complaint is that this was squeezed into the end and didn’t have as much time to develop as some other parts of the novel, but it was executed thoughtfully nonetheless.

And the epilogue…hnnnnnnnngh do I love a good “the fabric of the universe is made up of love” story AUUUUUUUUGH

All in all, a heartwarming, sensitive, and thoughtful story of love, robots, and what it means to have—and to want—a mind and a life of your own. 4.5 stars!

The Infinity Particle is a standalone, but Wendy Xu is also the co-creator of Mooncakes and the creator of Tidesong.

Today’s song:

I feel like I remember this song about every 5 years and realize how much I’ve missed it…

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 (12/24/24) – The Lost Story

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles, and a merry Christmas Eve (and Christmas, in advance) to those who celebrate! No matter your beliefs, I hope you’re staying warm and spending time with your loved ones this week. Happy holidays! ❄️⛄️🎄🍪

I discovered Meg Shaffer’s debut novel, The Wishing Game, about a month back and loved it. (Bottom line: if you’re an adult who wished they could’ve gotten Willy Wonka’s golden ticket as a kid, READ IT.) Naturally, I moved onto The Lost Story the minute it became available at the library. Although it wasn’t as strong as Shaffer’s debut, The Lost Story is a testament to the healing power of fantasy.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Lost Story – Meg Shaffer

When they were 15, Rafe Howell and Jeremy Cox went missing in the West Virginia woods. Six months after their disappearance, they came back, seemingly unscathed. What the rest of the world doesn’t know is that they escaped to a fantasy world hidden deep in the Red Crow State Forest. But only Jeremy remembers their odyssey. Now, distanced for 15 years, Rafe remembers nothing about what happened that day, and Jeremy has a magical knack for discovering missing persons.

Emilie Wendell has gotten wind of Jeremy’s talent for locating the missing, and enlists his help to find her older sister, who vanished in the same stretch of woods where he and Rafe went missing all those years ago. With Rafe and Jeremy in tow, Emilie discovers a magical world that could have only sprung from the mind of a child, only visible to those who look hard enough. But confronting this world and its secrets may lead to the very reason that Jeremy and Rafe never spoke of their time together—and the reason why Emilie’s sister never returned.

TW/CW: near death situations, discussions of child endangerment/kidnapping (past), abuse (physical and emotional), homophobia, loss of loved ones (past), fantasy violence, mentions of suicide (past)

I never got around to reviewing The Wishing Game (which I liked better than The Lost Story) here, but it’s safe to say that Meg Shaffer is out here doing the good work, and by the good work I mean writing books about reclaiming childhood innocence and joy via the stories we loved as children. Having read both books, Shaffer really gets the power of stories—and the power of rediscovering them in adulthood. The balance between childlike wonder and whimsy and the harrowing realities that come with adulthood are a difficult balance to strike, but The Lost Story lives in the reality between them and never denies either aspect. Rafe and Jeremy’s journey of healing, rescuing people who may not need to be rescued, and realizing their love for each other was a rickety, emotional ride, but one that, once the plot got going, paid off in spades. Plus, I love that Shaffer made this story a distinctly queer one—I always love queer books, but the fantasy escapism plot with their queer identities made so much sense when you consider how fiction can be a sanctuary for queer people.

Part of what made that aspect of The Lost Story land so well was that Shanandoah truly felt like a child’s wonderland. There was a charm to the misplaced names (the Valkyries being only what a young girl would think of the real Valkyries of Norse myth, for instance) and the over-the-top magical ones, and each fantasy element had the nonsensical aspect of a child’s mind. This world is full of magical horses, impossibly sweet fruit, vengeful spirits, and everything a child could possibly populate a fantasy world with—and all of it is delightful. The Narnia influence was clear (it’s wonderful! Imagine C.S. Lewis without the proselytizing), but there was a whimsy to it that Shaffer excelled in—even if it was separate from the real world, she fully succeeding in making a world feel like it was ripped from the pages of a 13-year-old girl’s notebook.

However, I really didn’t see the point of Emilie being a part of the story. In contrast to Jeremy and Rafe’s complicated relationship, the only thread connecting her to the narrative was the fact that it was her sister who happened to have gone missing. Her personality bordered on grating—there wasn’t much to her other than a determination to find her sister and having her “teehee! so quirky”-isms when the plot called for it. (But did it really call for it?) My main issue with her is that she didn’t have the development that the other characters did. She witnesses the wonders and horrors of Shanandoah and comes out of it having barely changed, save for the fact that she’s reunited with Shannon. In contrast with Rafe and Jeremy, it just seemed increasingly obvious that she didn’t have as much business being there, even though she was purportedly the main character. The Lost Story might have been stronger if she had been nixed entirely—she was placed as the protagonist, but at its heart, it was the story of Rafe, Jeremy, and Shannon, not her.

Additionally, The Lost Story had some issues with its pacing. It took nearly halfway through the book for the characters to reach Shanandoah, the whole premise of the book. The first third or so, although Shaffer’s establishment of the exposition was spread out evenly, tended to drag. Instead of more development that could have lead more to the (excellent) arcs of the characters later on, we get drawn-out scenes of banter between the main characters once they reunite, as well as some tired training montages that could have been flattened out into a much shorter scene. As a result, the first half of the events in Shanandoah were rushed together—our heroes reach this famed fantasy land, and almost immediately, they’re separated and thrown on wildly different adventures that only converge in the last quarter or so. For such a grounded story, there needed to be more even allocation of events that truly mattered, which is why I couldn’t give it the full 4 stars.

That being said, I loved how the duality of the themes were tied together in the end. For all of the characters, the land of Shanandoah was escapism, but they had different ways of handling reality while in it. For Rafe and Jeremy, they couldn’t stay because there were real monsters they had to confront; Shanandoah worked both as a place for them to rekindle their relationship, but also to confront the very real demons back in the real West Virginia. For them, they had to return to the real world to heal. But for Shannon, Shanandoah was the realest part of her life. She had gotten into a situation that no child should ever be placed in, and for that, her childhood wish for another world came true, and it became her sanctuary. If The Lost Story had gone with either interpretation, I would’ve been happy, but I loved Shaffer’s approach in depicting both sides of fantasy and escapism. Fantasy can be a place to ignore all of your troubles, but also a place you return to when you need healing. Even if it’s fictional, it can be the truest, realest part of you. Both can be true.

All in all, a heartfelt and heartstring-tugging fantasy for all of the kids who wanted to return to Narnia. 3.75 stars, rounded up to 4!

The Lost Story is a standalone, but Meg Shaffer is also the author of The Wishing Game.

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 (12/17/24) – Can’t Take That Away

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

For the time being, I’m back! Safe to say I was swamped this semester, so I’m glad that I’ll have about a month of rest before I go back to school for the spring semester. When I wasn’t writing here or in my WIPs, I wrote around a combined 24 combined pages for various papers…and they say being an English major is easy…

Either way, I’ve had Can’t Take That Away on my radar since it came out in 2021. As with most other books on my TBR, there’s no real rationale for it languishing there for so long. I ended picking it up because of the premise; queer YA and MG books are bearing the brunt of bans and challenges here in the States, so I wanted to support them whenever I can (even if it’s already a good amount of what I read). (I can’t find anything definitive on whether or not this one was actually banned or challenged other than one Goodreads reviewer shelving it as such.) Either way, though it had its flaws, the storyline of Can’t Take That Away feels ripped right out of the headlines, and it’s a vital piece of literature for trans teens looking to find their voices.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Can’t Take That Away – Steven Salvatore

Carey Parker was born to be a diva. With an unwavering love for Mariah Carey and aspirations of stardom, they have fought tooth and nail to express themself the way that they want. So when a friend convinces them to audition for Elphaba in their high school’s production of Wicked, they seize the opportunity—and land the leading role. Yet in spite of their apparent talent, parents and teachers cause an uproar about genderqueer Carey’s casting in the role of a leading lady. With mounting threats to kick them out of the play and dismantle the production all together, Carey must find their voice in order to prove that they deserve to be heard—and sing.

TW/CW: homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, misgendering, physical assault/violence, descriptions of injuries, bullying, gender dysphoria, suicidal ideation, cheating, loss of loved ones

I have nothing against Wicked, but reading this while being oversaturated with all things Wicked every time I opened up Instagram was an experience, for sure…I guess if Carey were a real person, they’d be over the moon at the prospect of the movie, so there’s that.

Without a doubt, Can’t Take That Away is a story that needed to be told. For the most part, I applaud Steven Salvatore for delivering this novel with unflinching realism (about 90% of it, at any rate. More on that later). The plot—parents and teachers cause an uproar when a genderqueer teen takes on the role of Elphaba in their high school’s production of Wicked—feels like a headline waiting to happen. I have no doubt that it’s already happened. My only minor complaint is that the main villains (Mr. Jackson and Max) felt cardboard, but they too, in a way, felt like the adults raving and ranting about “gender ideology” and the online trolls bent on tearing queer people down. They leaned on the side of exaggeration, yet…some people are just like that, unfortunately. That realism is what fueled the story; Carey’s manifold struggles, from grappling with gender dysphoria, bullies, and first love, was delivered both candidly and sensitively. Salvatore didn’t hold back from the ugly parts of some of these topics (be warned—happy ending aside, it’s a rough ride), but it made them all the more important to show that, like the plot, Carey is as real a person as your trans classmate. Carey could easily be someone in your life, and that was what made the story ring so resonantly.

That being said, I felt that the romance was incredibly messy, and not necessarily in a good way. Having Carey have their first love as they’re fighting to find themself was a good side plot in concept, but…it was just a dumpster fire for no reason. I don’t know if this is just me reading YA and no longer being a teenager, but half of the romantic drama felt unnecessary in contrast to the very timely, very upfront main plot. Why did Carey need to kiss some random guy in a basement while they were dating Cris? How are Carey and Cris just okay with everything that the other did? Maybe this is just me, but if my partner kissed somebody else in a basement while we were dating, I wouldn’t come running back…see? MESSY. Can’t Take That Away already had high drama aplenty, and I know that’s a hallmark of YA to some extent (that I appreciate), but this bordered on ridiculous.

I’m rather conflicted about the ending. It was wrapped up quite neatly, which isn’t inherently a crime, especially since it’s YA. There are bound to be some things that are tied up more nicely than they would be in real life. Can’t Take That Away is aimed at high schoolers, and unless it’s too neat, this quality isn’t always an instant flaw in YA books. That being said, Can’t Take That Away bordered on taking that to an extreme. After the protest, the cops are immediately on the side of the queer people and people of color, and have almost no hesitation about punishing the white male perpetrators of the hate crimes. Carey’s protest immediately goes viral, and they get so famous that they get free tickets to see Mariah Carey and go onstage and sing with her. The bad guys get their comeuppance almost instantly, and the good guys get the greatest rewards possible. I’m not saying that Carey and company didn’t deserve a happy ending—they absolutely did—but it felt unrealistic to a point where it almost felt like the fulfillment of a fantasy. Sure, that’s what writing’s for to some extent, but when dealing with a plot that felt ripped from the headlines, the resolution felt much less so. You can give characters a fulfilling, satisfying victory that feels earned and realistic!

Yet at the same time, queer kids deserve these kinds of stories. There are easily infinite examples of straight characters getting unrealistic endings that end in instant fame and wish fulfillment, so why shouldn’t Carey? Why shouldn’t all of the trans kids reading their story? Yes, it made me roll my eyes a little when this story, one that ended well enough, had to escalate everything to “and then Carey got everything that they ever wanted in life! Yippee!” But after the deluge of hatred and violence that Carey endured throughout Can’t Take That Away, why shouldn’t they get that ending? This novel is not escapist by any stretch of the imagination, but there’s a kind of necessary escapism in these stories—very real circumstances resolving with the absolute best possible outcome with no strings attached. Sure, it was a stretch, but Carey deserves it—and so do all of the queer teens reading this book.

All in all, a book with flaws here and there, but ultimately proved a timely story about finding your voice. 3.5 stars!

Can’t Take That Away is a standalone, but Steven Salvatore is also the author of And They Lived…, No Perfect Places, The Boyfriend Subscription, and the forthcoming novel When Love Gives You Lemons, which is slated for release in May of 2025.

Today’s song:

this is the least fitting pick for a book about a teen who loves Mariah Carey, but I only pair books with songs in my Sunday Songs, so…enjoy the whiplash. Bon appetit!

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 (11/26/24) – Countess

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I try not to let my lizard brain take over when it comes to my TBR these days (that’s how it got to almost 1,100 books back to high school…that took some serious pruning). That being said, at this point, I’ve accepted that the phrases “space opera,” “queer,” and “anti-colonial” strung together activate me like some kind of sleeper agent. Thus, Countess found its way onto my TBR and swiftly onto my Kindle. It excited me even more that Countess was Caribbean-inspired and that the author is Trinidadian-Canadian (!!!!), so my expectations were high. Though it wasn’t perfect, Countess was a raw and brutal novella—hardly a page was wasted.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Countess – Suzan Palumbo

Centuries after the British colonized islands in the Caribbean, an evolution of their iron fist remains in space. Under the harsh rule of the Æcerbot Empire, planets and moons are stripped of their resources and their inhabitants left with the paltry choice to enter an immigration lottery to find work or make a meager on their exploited homeworlds.

Virika Sameroo has sworn her life to the empire, loyal to their army for years. But just as she attempts to ascend to a higher position, her captain mysteriously dies—and the imperial authorities frame him for his death. Imprisoned and alienated from the empire that brainwashed her, Virika becomes an unlikely figure for a galaxy-wide revolution—but will she survive long enough to see the Æcerbot empire fall to its knees?

TW/CW: colonization/imperialism themes, torture, murder, descriptions of corpses, blood, self-harm, attempted suicide, sexual assault

how it feels to enjoy a retelling when a bunch of the reviews say that it doesn’t follow the source material (I’ve never read The Count of Monte Cristo):

Of course, regardless of whether or not I’ve actually read The Count of Monte Cristo, I think it’s worth saying that a retelling doesn’t have to stick to every plot line to a T. I get going into a retelling and being disappointed on that front, but even if the setting is wildly different (as Countess is), I don’t think it’s a crime to tweak many of the plot points. In this case, having a vastly different setting kind of necessitates the plot being different, but from what I can gather, Countess is more inspired by The Count of Monte Cristo than it is a direct retelling. That’s fine, in my book. No pun intended.

As a whole, Countess was a fantastic read, but its one weak point was the writing. In a way, the writing style, even if I disliked some of it, worked for the story—and the character—that Palumbo was telling. It picks up at the halfway point, once the plot rockets into a breakneck pace in terms of both action and stakes, but for the first half, the prose felt very bare-bones. Even in this new, expansive empire in the stars full of political intrigue, there wasn’t much to embellish the prose—it was all very quick and to the point, with language that took the quickest routes to explain how we got from point A to point B. This is my first experience with Palumbo’s writing, so I’m not sure if it’s just her style, but either way, it works in connection to Virika; she’s been groomed to be a perfect, obedient soldier, so I doubt she’d be one to mince words or get into excessively flowery prose. For some of the scenes where Virika is in prison and a decade blurs by in only a handful of pages, it makes complete sense. Yet I needed some more descriptive prose to get me immersed in the setting—and in the other characters outside of Virika.

I’m all for having gentler books about resistance, but that doesn’t mean that narratives centered around brutal realities have no place. In fact, in stories like that of Countess, I’d argue that they’re necessary. This is a novella about the horrors of imperialism, down to the most minute aspects. For me, it didn’t go full grimdark, but it was because there was realism to it; grimdark is, for the most part nothing but suffering and pain with no real basis, but the events of Countess, horrendous as they are, were logical byproducts of the crushing weight of a colonialist empire with the galaxy under its colossal thumb. Palumbo pulled no punches with the depictions of what Virika goes through (especially the sequences in prison…please pay attention to the trigger warnings); some of it bordered on gratuitous, but this is a slim novella, and all of it was in service of the theme that the crimes under imperialism are many, varied, and real.

As I’ve said so many times, I see the phrases “queer,” “space opera,” and “anti-colonial” and I’ll run towards the book like I’m a bull that’s just seen the tiniest sliver of red in my peripheral vision. What grabbed me about Countess in particular was that it was Caribbean-inspired—particularly Trinidadian. My grandparents on my mom’s side are from Trinidad, and I’ve seen hardly any literature—much less speculative fiction—that incorporates these cultures. Admittedly, I’m more than a little distanced from that part of my heritage, but I’ve been learning thanks to the tireless research of my amazing artist mom, who is in the process of making a Caribbean oracle deck of her own! It’s thanks to her that I caught a lot of the Trini and generally Caribbean references (the fact that there’s a rebel ship called the Pomerac was gold), and there are plenty scattered throughout the novella—I’m sure I didn’t catch all of them, but what I recognized, I loved. I’ve loved witnessing the shift towards marginalized voices in speculative fiction, but one of the reasons it feels particularly beautiful to me is because for so long, our communities have been denied a place in the collective imagination, a place in a distant future among the stars. So thank you to Suzan Palumbo for this novella, and thank you to my wonderful mom for being the reason that I got these references.

In these kinds of stories (and in life in general), I always try to look for a glimmer of hope, even if it’s foolish of me. Make no mistake: Countess is a tragedy, one of the many (forthcoming) ones that Palumbo has written, according to her Goodreads bio. This novella is a very realistic depiction of how revolutions often make martyrs of their figureheads, and that was Virika’s fate from the start. Palumbo does make you feel the wasted potential of her life as she falls, but I couldn’t help but see the swell of revolution that she ushered in as the ultimate form of revenge—and an assurance of a better tomorrow, at least for a short time.

All in all, a brutal and bold—if not rote in periods—novel of revolutionary change and one woman’s struggle to break free of imperialism. 4 stars!

Countess is a standalone novella, but Suzan Palumbo is also the author of the anthology Skin Thief: Stories and several short stories in various magazines.

Today’s song:

finally got around to listening to Songs Of A Lost World!! this was my favorite—the whole album tended to be repetitive, but it was great 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 Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (11/19/24) – Loka (The Alloy Era, #2)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

…so. Elephant in the room here, quite literally. I’ll venture to say that last Tuesday was one of the worst Tuesdays in American history. Hence, no activity. (Also, I had a whole cocktail of midterms to study for and papers and annotated bibliographies to write.) I needed the time to grieve. Let me tell you the truth: I’m so scared. I’m betrayed. Being in my formative years under a president who systematically mocked the identities of everyone who isn’t him—not just the ones that comprise my family—forced me to confront the fact that America had no regard for me. If there was change to be made, I had to do it myself, and with the help of the communities around me. So I started writing. I started educating myself. The process is never over, and will continue until my dying day; even with the sort of beef that I have with Sara Ahmed (yeah, killjoy etc. etc. etc., I’m on board with 50% of it, but can’t feminism be gleeful sometimes?), I look back to her words: “To become a feminist is to stay a student.” I am always learning. I am far from perfect, but I am trying. The key here is motion: we can’t afford to stay static, not in our ideas or in our actions. Resistance comes in many forms (and don’t let anybody tell you that there’s one right way to fight), but the key is that we must always keep moving. Donate. Protest. Pay someone a compliment. Make art. Write with hope in your heart. Trump and his ilk win when we’re too far into the quicksand of hopelessness.

Never lose hope and never lose love, because that is what the Trump administration lacks. Grieve, and grieve on your terms. I certainly did. The last thing I wanted was a repeat of that November morning when, at the age of 13, I woke up to my dad hanging his head over the kitchen counter as he made lunches for my brother and I. I remember clinging to him tighter than I ever had, frightened of every horrid possibility. Some of them came true. Some of them didn’t. I called both of my parents. I cried the same tears to them that I cried when I was young. Cry the same tears, but remember that they are the same tears. I’m frightened. But if we can resist Trump once, we can do it again. We can fight the same good fight. I love you.

…

All this is to say that, even though my output has been lessened lately (college!), this won’t change a thing. I’ll still be reviewing queer books aplenty, and no election will change that. Gather ’round.

After a solid two weeks of reading nothing but fluff to keep my mind off of everything, I remembered that Meru, one of the more innovative new sci-fi novels I read last year, had a sequel that was finally out! I was eager to re-immerse myself into S.B. Divya’s endlessly creative futuristic landscape, and Loka found itself on my Kindle in no time. Loka turned out to be contrary to my expectations and a very different book to Meru—it was a mixed bag at first, but by the final third, I’m happy to say that it stuck the landing in a deeply moving way.

Now, TREAD LIGHTLY! This review contains spoilers for Meru, book one in The Alloy Era series. If you haven’t read Meru and intend to do so, read at your own risk!

For my review of book one, Meru, click here!

Enjoy this week’s review!

Loka (The Alloy Era, #2) – S.B. Divya

Akshana is a child that defies all existence. Her mother is human, and her maker is an Alloy—a post-human being with godlike powers. The ruling Alloy government condemns her very existence. For years, she has lived a sheltered existence on the planet Meru, raised by her human mother. But once Akshana turns 16, she heeds the call of Earth, the ancient homeworld of humankind. With the help of her friends, she takes up the rigorous Anthro Challenge: a trek to circumnavigate the habitable zone of Earth. As she navigates foreign terrain, Akshana comes to terms with how she was born and created—and where her destiny lies.

TW/CW: near-death situations, medical emergencies (related to sickle-cell anemia), xenophobia/discrimination (fictional), life-threatening storms

I thought that Meru had scared off all of the people who thought that S.B. Divya invented neopronouns, but apparently people are still complaining about it in the reviews for Loka? Did you just…miss book one in its entirety, or what?

I’ll get my main gripe about Loka out of the way first. The more I think about it, the more that I realize that my issue with Loka is that to some extent, it has the exact same stakes as Meru: a young girl/woman has to take a daring trek onto a foreign landscape, all the while facing prejudice from the outside world and alien, terrestrial dangers from the ground beneath her feet. S.B. Divya remains an excellent writer and crafter of worlds, but in terms of plot, in this case, lightning couldn’t strike twice. Aside from Akshana’s differing personality and the novelty of Earth 1,000 years in the future, there wasn’t as much to distinguish the two plots once I broke them down.

I wasn’t crazy about the main plot of the Anthro Challenge. In the future landscape of Loka, this challenge is designed for humans and Alloys to circumnavigate the landscape of Earth as humans did millennia ago. Only a few strips of Earth remain habitable (forming ringed borders around the world), but the brave adventurer must cross swaths of the Southern hemisphere and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in order to complete the challenge. In concept, it’s a great bit of worldbuilding, but it didn’t make for a very compelling of a plot. For the first half of the novel, it felt like the same regurgitation of 1) reach new landscape, 2) inter or intra-personal conflict within the friend group, and 3) make a harrowing trek to the next stop on the Challenge. This was rinsed and repeated with less change than I wanted; even with the new landscapes, none of the side characters had much time to develop, and they seemed to encounter almost the exact same problems for a solid 100 pages. It bordered on feeling cheap, given how innovative Meru was.

That being said, even though the plot faltered, Divya’s writing never did. You’ve just got to trust in her abilities at this point, because she can write some fantastic sci-fi, even if the foundation of the plot is flimsy. Her voice for Akshana perfectly captured that teenage urge to explore beyond your parents’ backyard and prove everyone wrong. Divya’s descriptions of future Earth, from the raging seas to the lush greenery to the plains of a futuristic America, immersed me instantly in a vibrantly crafted vision of the future. I’ll get to the specifics of the emotional core of Loka later, but that was perhaps the best part of the novel—S.B. Divya’s brand of space opera borders on hard sci-fi for me, but it keeps the emotional center that so many other hard sci-fi novels forget to consider.

The subject of disability was one of the more compelling aspects of Meru; in a genre rife with eugenic practices that get dismissed as signs of a “progressive” society, Divya changed the game by creating Jayanthi, who, in a future when most disabilities were edited out of the gene pool, was specifically engineered to have sickle-cell anemia. More than that, her sickle-cell anemia was advantageous for surviving the landscape of Meru. Fast-forward 16 years, and Akshana is experiencing, as I said before, the same plot, but her sickle-cell anemia presents unique challenges on Earth, leading to many a close scrape when she exhausts herself to near-fatal levels. She has thoughts of resentment towards her mother, who made a conscious decision to pass this gene down to her. S.B. Divya said that Loka was inspired by their experience being a disabled parent, and that shone through in Loka; eugenicists would have you believe that this would constitute cruelty on the highest level, but Akshana comes to reconcile with—and understand—her mother’s logic. By erasing this gene and others from the gene pool, the Alloys past erased entire cultures, as well as the ways in which they moved about in the world. Being disabled is challenging, to say the least, and in my experience, bothersome and at times taxing to deal with on a daily basis. Yet it has shaped my life in ways that I will never regret. Akshana comes to realize that her mother, even though the road to this decision was rocky, merely wanted her to know that individuality, adversity, and culture cannot be erased by a purging of the gene pool.

Which brings me to the ending. The buildup of Loka concerns the mounting pressure and prejudice surrounding daring Akshana and her friends as they complete the challenge and return to a world that wants to erase their bravery and ban the Anthro Challenge altogether. Not only has she come to terms with her disability, she has come to reckon with her status as a half-human, half-Alloy being in a galaxy where neither party wants her to exist. Yes, there was the physical challenge, but the real Anthro Challenge is the identity crisis you have along the way, amirite? All jokes aside, that was the real hurdle to overcome. I know how corny I sound, but the real journey was Akshana’s journey to self-acceptance in all of the facets of her identity. At the end of the treacherous paved with prejudice and hatred, Akshana learns that the only way to survive is to be yourself, unapologetically so. As she says, in Loka’s stunning final lines:

“Our bodies don’t have a true end. Subatomic particles bounced between skin and air continually. So what did that make me, or any person? If I coexisted with everything and everyone, then part of me was also part of them, and vice versa. To some people, I would never be human enough. To others, I would always be too human. In the end, I had no choice by to be myself.”

And if anything could save Loka from being a letdown, it would be this, and the character arc it coincides with. Excuse me for a moment…no, I’m not crying, it’s just raining on my face.

All in all, a sequel with a plot that nearly dragged the novel down, but just like Akshana completing the Anthro Challenge, beautifully stuck the landing after a rocky journey. 4 stars!

Loka is the second book in The Alloy Era series, preceded by Meru. S.B. Divya is also the author of Machinehood, Runtime, and several other science fiction short stories.

Today’s song:

NEW HORSEGIRL IN FEBRUARY? ON VALENTINE’S DAY? PRODUCED BY CATE LE BON? today is a GOOD day

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 (10/29/24) – The Book That Wouldn’t Burn

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

The ranting hour is upon us…yet I didn’t hate the book I’m reviewing today. It’s not abject hatred, more just frustration. Maybe I am a good-for-nothing Gen Z-er with no attention span, but I feel like if you don’t get into much concrete worldbuilding until the halfway point of a nearly 600-page book, that’s a real crime in your writing. Unfortunately, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn is guilty.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn – Mark Lawrence

At a young age, Livira was kidnapped, then rescued and delivered to a sprawling city. Within that city was The Library, a building with layers upon layers inside, containing an archive that spans thousands of years. Now focusing on the education she never had, Livira will discover secrets that will change her world forever.

Evar has lived his entire life trapped inside of the bowels of The Library. Hunted by monsters, he was orphaned at a young age, and his siblings have slowly been picked off as well. With no escape in sight, he spends his days desperately looking for a way out—and he cannot see one until he finds a lost girl named Livira.

TW/CW: kidnapping, loss of loved ones, blood, violence

DNF at 44%.

I know I often gripe about long fantasy novels taking eons to get to the point, but this pushed it to the extreme. All of the rave reviews kept swearing that there was some massive payoff to the excruciating trek that was this book, but the intangible promise of something wasn’t enough to keep me going. The Book That Wouldn’t Burn felt stuffed to the brim with plot lines of no substance or development, and it’s not like the book was too short to be cut down. 571 pages. There were absolutely some chapters that had no business being there.

Suspense and worldbuilding are story elements that normally aren’t confused, but it seems that Lawrence got them mixed up in the construction of The Book That Wouldn’t Burn. It’s one thing to have a crucial element of your world be a secret—that was what the novel hinges on, and from the looks of it, understandably so. This technique is mainly for elements that will change the way the reader and the characters perceive the world. Lawrence’s problem was that he applied that to almost all of the worldbuilding. We get a brief glimpse of the outside world, but not much is known save for the divisions between humans and sabbers (a hostile, dog-like species), and that there’s a Vaguely Medieval Epic Fantasy Town™️ outside of The Library. I get that the focus is on The Library, so what’s the point of establishing any of it if it’s not going to be of any consequence later on in the book? Granted, I didn’t finish it, but the way it was written was so hasty. I did get some semblance of how The Library works, but it was too little too late. If you dangle some reveal over the reader’s head the entire time, you should at least have some information about the world to scaffold why you should care. To some extent, I can see that since all of this was foreign to Livira, but that’s not an excuse to barely describe anything!

I wanted to like Evar, but in the end, his situation was more compelling than who he was as a person. That’s because he’s a walking case study in why tragic backstories don’t automatically make a character fleshed-out. We know all about how he’s been trying to claw his way out of the catacombs of The Library and has been hunted by monsters who have killed his parents and many of his siblings…but we know nothing else other than that. Aside from an implied resilience on the virtue of him being able to survive being trapped in a monster-filled maze beneath a library, I know nothing about this kid. We are given exactly zero hints about his personality. I felt pity for him because of his circumstances, but I put down this book knowing nothing about what makes him tick, other than a vague semblance of revenge. I don’t know why he speaks the way he does, I don’t know his habits, I don’t know how he interacts with the world. I wanted to know him! His relationships were solely defined by their proximity to other people (many of whom were dead). By the time he finally met Livira, I couldn’t care less about how they would interact—mostly because Livira got sucked into some Library portal right before anything of significance could happen. 250 pages, about a third of which were devoted to Evar, and I just could not care less.

Now, for why I picked up The Book That Wouldn’t Burn in the first place…The Library. Again, this could be a consequence of me not reading enough of the book, but I think there’s merit in saying that there’s not nearly enough focus on what’s actually interesting about it for the first half of the novel. After the initial revelations that a) Livira now has access to a library the size of a city with archives spanning thousands of years and b) that there are people trapped in a monster-filled maze beneath it, we get…nothing else. There’s much more focus on Livira’s education in The Library, mainly because when she comes there, she does not know how to read or write. That wouldn’t be a bad thing if it weren’t for the fact that these scenes are repetitive to a fault. Remember what I said about this book potentially benefitting from some hedge trimming? This is precisely where I would slim down the page count. I don’t ascribe to the belief that every little thing has to advance the plot, but you’ve got to have something to keep the reader’s interest—it felt like the same cycle of Livira reading, writing, and getting teased by the apprentices. Rinse and repeat for approximately 100 pages. Now do you see why I quit?

The lesson of The Book That Wouldn’t Burn is that you can’t hold a book afloat on a concept alone. I wanted to like the premise so much—what’s not to like about a massive, age-old library that’s larger than a city and holds unknowable horrors beneath it? But the scaffolding necessary to keep me interested was flimsy at best. Lawrence’s writing had moments of being clever, but that, along with the shaky bits of information about the library, were not enough to hold my interest. 1.5 stars, because it wasn’t all bad, but I was so painfully bored by a book with a fascinating premise, which is truly a crime.

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn is the first novel in The Library trilogy, followed by The Book That Broke the World and The Book That Held Her Heart. Mark Lawrence is also the author of several fantasy series, including The Broken Empire trilogy (Prince of Thorns, King of Thorns, and Emperor of Thorns), The Red Queen’s War trilogy (Prince of Fools, The Liar’s Key, and The Wheel of Osheim), and many more.

Today’s song:

saw the magnetic fields for the 69 Love Songs anniversary tour over the weekend—what an incredible show!!

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 (10/22/24) – The Brightness Between Us (The Darkness Outside Us, #2)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

We’re keeping up my sequel streak for the time being, so it seems. The difference between this and The Heart of the World is that I had no idea that The Darkness Outside Us, one of my favorite books of 2021, was even getting a sequel in the first place. That novel rocked my world—it really enraptured me in a way that not a whole lot of books ever have. But it was beautiful as a standalone—it had about as satisfying of an ending as you could ask for. So I was teetering towards hesitantly optimistic when I heard about The Brightness Outside Us, but in the end, I’m so glad I took the gamble; this novel is a different kind of twisty than its predecessor, but it’s worth taking the leap.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Now, tread lightly! This review contains spoilers for book one, The Darkness Outside Us. If you haven’t read it and intend on doing so, read at your own risk!

For my review of book one, The Darkness Outside Us, click here!

The Brightness Between Us (The Darkness Outside Us, #2)

In the 24th century, Ambrose Cusk is on the cusp of the greatest space mission mankind has ever embarked on. After losing his sister Minerva in a troubled gambit outside of the solar system, Ambrose is set to cross the universe itself in order to save her. But when he discovers that he won’t be on the ship—only clones of himself—he is determined to get to the bottom of what his true mission is—and what really happened to Minerva.

30,000 years in the future, the final clones of Ambrose and Kodiak have grown from the teenage clones they once were into fathers of two children. Owl and Yarrow live a peaceful but sheltered existence on the surface of Minerva. Owl yearns to learn what the rest of the planet holds, but her parents are keen on keeping her safe. But when her brother Yarrow begins acting strangely, the family suspects that a stranger thousands of years in the past may have sabotaged their mission.

TW/CW: violence, war, past mentions of child death, animal death, terrorism, intrusive thoughts

It didn’t even cross my mind that The Darkness Outside Us would have a sequel. I went into this novel with trepidation—how do you follow up a novel as twisty, complex, and heartwrenchingly beautiful as The Darkness Outside Us? By splitting the novel in two, as it turns out. I didn’t think that The Darkness Outside Us needed a sequel, but nonetheless, I’m glad I stuck around to see the result—of course Eliot Schrefer would have something fascinating up his sleeve.

The Brightness Between Us reminds me of how much I love a good “space colony gone wrong” story. As I said, I didn’t even think about The Darkness Outside Us getting a sequel, but this novel has the perfect setup for precisely this kind of plot. I should have trusted Schrefer from the start, given how masterful book one was, but wow, the Minerva plot amazed me! There was so much solid, hard sci-fi put into the terrain, climate, and wildlife of Minerva, and Schrefer did an excellent job of keeping the reader in the dark just enough to make everything suspenseful, even when the mysterious bones that Owl digs up in her exoplanet yard only turn out to be from a duck. From the research behind the wildlife, the weather, and the atmosphere, no stone was left unturned, each one its own Chekhov’s gun waiting to fire.

Although Owl wasn’t my favorite protagonist, she fits perfectly for the environment she’s in. Every “space colony gone wrong” needs a character who questions everything; there is always some part of the planet that has been unexplored, and someone needs to be curious and daring enough to want to discover what’s on the other side of the world. It can be even more effective when that character is a child; children are naturally curious, making it more than simply questioning authority—the authority is often their parental figures, and the excuses of them hiding things “for their safety” feel more tangible. Fifteen-year-old Owl was naturally curious, but also paired with her more obedient (at first) brother, Yarrow, giving her more resentment towards her parents. She wasn’t as likeable as Ambrose or Kodiak (I loved seeing them become parents), but they had the home field advantage of book one. But I can recognize when a character is perfect for the plot they’re in, and Owl was the perfect match for the plot of The Brightness Between Us.

After the pummeling of gut-wrenching twists that we call The Darkness Outside Us, the sequel was going to have to pull off a miracle to follow it up in terms of plot. The main twist was so earth-shattering that I thought it would be impossible to come up with anything better. I remain correct—I don’t think anyone, much less Schrefer, could come up with a twist that could top book one. But the main twist that we do have was excellent enough to propel me to finish the book in one sitting—just like The Darkness Outside Us! (The difference is that it was at a reasonable hour this time. I’ve matured since 2021, I promise.) Not only is this duology a love story 30,000 years in the making—it’s a conspiracy 30,000 years in the making! I loved the twist that Devon manipulated the frozen fetuses to develop violently aggressive traits as they grew—it gave even more stakes to an already gripping plot, and it made the days of present future half of the novel gripping as well. It gave the “space colony gone wrong” side of The Brightness Outside Us a truly unique twist—sabotage from 30,000 years in the past, and two versions of the main characters communicating across time to thwart it.

All this talk about the Minerva plot, and I haven’t even touched on the “present-day” Ambrose and Kodiak…oops. I don’t have a favorite child, I swear. The worldbuilding in this half of The Brightness Outside Us was my favorite part; getting a glimpse into the forgotten world that we only knew about in whispers in book one was fascinating. Schrefer’s vision of a world divided into a corporate hellscape of excess and a corporate hellscape of rigidity was one that was mapped out just as vividly as the alien world of Minerva. You really do see how it is that Ambrose and Kodiak got to be how they were at the start of book one. In terms of character development, it did tend to feel like listening to a broken record after book one, but that’s my only minor nitpick—Schrefer made sure that they had startlingly different—and almost as emotional—arcs as their clone counterparts in The Darkness Outside Us. Devon was a fascinating, slippery antagonist, and his sabotage was one of my favorite parts of the novel to witness unfolding.

All in all, a sequel that had a Herculean task to live up to its predecessor, but delivered a miracle in spite of the odds—just like Ambrose and Kodiak. 5 stars!

The Brightness Between Us is the second book in The Darkness Outside Us series, preceded by The Darkness Outside Us. Eliot Schrefer has also written several other books for children and young adults, including the Ape Quartet (Endangered, Threatened, Rescued, and Orphaned), The Lost Rainforest series (Mez’s Magic, Gogi’s Gambit, and Rumi’s Riddle), Queer Ducks (And Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality, and many others.

Today’s song:

EVERGREEN COMES OUT THIS FRIDAY, ARE WE READY?

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 (10/15/24) – The Heart of the World (The Isles of the Gods, #2)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

The day has finally come…the Isles of the Gods duology has concluded. The end of a (short) era. I’m all over anything that Amie Kaufman writes, and even though fantasy isn’t my top genre, she made me fall in love with her brand of it. Naturally, The Heart of the World was one of my most anticipated releases of the year, and while it fell barely short of book 1, it stuck the landing to become a fulfilling conclusion to a duology full of heart.

Now, tread lightly! This review contains spoilers for book one, The Isles of the Gods. If you haven’t read it and intend to do so, read this review at your own risk!

For my review of The Isles of the Gods, click here!

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Heart of the World (The Isles of the Gods, #2) – Amie Kaufman

Selly Walker has failed.

When she, Leander, and Keegan tried in vain to seal away the gods from the mortal world, they created a conflict much worse than they could have ever imagined. Now, Leander is the mortal messenger of Barrica, goddess of war. Possessed by power beyond human comprehension and puppeteered by a being of unearthly sway, he knows that war is brewing—and that allowing Barrica into the mortal realm would kill him in the process. Selly, now deeply in love, will risk anything to make sure that Leander is unscathed, but little to they know that the rival god Macean has his own Messenger—and that he’s hungry for war.

TW/CW: violence, blood, murder, loss of loved ones, neglectful parent

Man, Amie Kaufman just can’t resist writing relationship dynamics where one becomes all-powerful and the other is Just Some Guy, huh? Not to call Selly just some (gal), but…Aurora Cycle fans, we see it, right?

It’s not like me to rate a solo Amie Kaufman book in the 4-star range. Well, sort of. The Isles of the Gods was a 4.75 for me, but that was easily rounded up to 5. I expected The Heart of the World to be more of the same, and it almost was. Almost. Its fatal flaw was that it took so long to get back on its feet after the chaos and craziness that was the ending of book 1. That was so campy (in an Indiana Jones way) and explosive that it must have been so hard to ground the beginning afterwards. An additional problem is that this book is 400 pages long, which meant that, for the first fifth to a quarter of the novel, it bordered on dragging. Kaufman’s writing didn’t suffer, and neither did the characters, but The Heart of the World took so long to regain its sea legs that it never fully recovered.

From there, however…I have no notes. Even if that first fifth (or thereabouts) dragged in terms of plot, it excelled in terms of character development. Leander’s arc was among the most well-developed of the novel—as it should have been, given that he’s on the cover and all. As I said before, unceremoniously foisting godlike power onto ordinary people and watching them try and grapple with the consequences is Amie Kaufman’s bread and butter. Leander’s internal struggle of being both a puppet of Barrica and being tossed around by the royal family—his family—and being treated like an overpowered chess piece made for some enticing internal struggles. I hesitate to say that his relationship with Selly was a genderbent carbon copy of Kal and Auri, but…the similarities were there. However, what sets them apart is the differences in Leander and Selly’s characters. Unlike Auri, Leander was slick and confident before he he was forced to embody Barrica’s power—thinking he had sway and power was nothing compared to having a taste of uncontrollable, immortal power, and it fundamentally rearranged who he was as a person. Selly, on the other hand, was already out of her depth and new to the relationship, but clung to the glimpse of the real Leander, and knew that she couldn’t risk losing him—or their shared home. I trust Amie Kaufman enough to know that she wouldn’t copy and paste a relationship dynamic, and the more I think about it, the less it feels like a rehash—Selly and Leander were so sweet together, and this wrench in their romance was one that created an intricate rift to explore.

Speaking of Selly being out of her depth…good god, I just want to give her a hug. Lord. Kaufman already gave her a great obstacle in trying to find her way through the palace life and feeling like a fish out of water while trying to navigate impending war. Then she had to resolve the arc about Selly looking up to her dad…who, as was faintly hinted at in The Isles of the Gods, turned out to be using her for her magic, then abandoned her. My poor girlie…either way, it was written so sensitively. After the smoke screen of her dad pushing her to foster her magic fell away, Selly realizes that he’s just been using her as a tool to bolster the family name, and Kaufman was able to hammer in just how crushing that was for her. All her life, she’s been in his service, and all of these years she’s waited for him to return, and you just knew that he only came back to her because Barrica had him and the rest of his crew under her spell. Their reunion was hollow, just like the remainder of their relationship. Once she began to come too grips with it, however, it was beautiful to see Selly assert that she would no longer be somebody else’s pawn—just like Leander. Waiter! Waiter, more parallels, please!

In my review of The Isles of the Gods, I said that I was miffed at the book being tagged LGBTQ+ when all we got was a background lesbian couple that was about the equivalent of that one scene in The Rise of Skywalker. (You know the one.) I couldn’t help but be disappointed. Let me say on the record that I stand corrected! The additional queer queen and consort aside (diversity win! This warmongering queen likes women!), we’ve also got some wonderful queer representation in Jude. Another minor complaint that I had about The Isles of the Gods was that Jude didn’t have an awful lot to do, even though he was one of five of the POV characters. Not only does he have a beautiful, tearjerking character arc, HE’S QUEER! AND HE’S HAS A WONDERFUL BOYFRIEND! After all that this poor guy has been through, I’d say that’s the ultimate reward. I had a feeling that something had to be queerer about The Isles of the Gods, but I’m so glad that Jude finally got his due diligence in terms of character development and focus—and queerness. We love a battle-scarred guy with a secret stash of fantasy books.

Another character arc I loved seeing resolved…Laskia! Along with Leander and Selly, she’s part of the unofficial “spent their lives being moved around like chess pieces” trio, and seeing her come into her power—without the help of Macean—was a beautiful redemption arc. Laskia was driven to villainy by a desire to be loved, constantly shoved in the shadow of her sister Ruby, and like Leander and Selly, she let herself believe that she was in control. For her, the ultimate act of heroism was to become her own person—to steer her own course in life. Looking back, that’s what the whole Isles of the Gods duology feels like it’s been about. The ultimate form of magic is to know your power, to know that you have control of your life, and that despite the pressures telling you to sail one way or another, you’re the captain of your own ship. 🫡

In the end, if there’s anything that Amie Kaufman can write like nobody’s business, it’s a final battle. It was so tightly paced and action-packed that it nearly made me forgive how slow of a start The Heart of the World had. An aspect that The Heart of the World introduces is how the gods and goddesses factor in (Kaufman’s descriptions of which were arresting, as was expected), but it gave stakes to the battle that truly made it feel like thousands of lives hung in the balance. And to conclude it all in an assertion that spending your life grieving will never make any new love grow? And how that grief can feel so desolate that nothing else can grow there? And that remembering the connections that you have in the here and now is how you can move forward? And…and…and…dammit, Amie Kaufman, you did it again. You can only hide behind so many cheery “hi my friends!” before the jig is up. YOU HAVE TO STOP RUNNING A STEAMROLLER THROUGH MY FEELINGS LIKE THIS.

All in all, a duology concluder that faltered slightly in its early stages, but stuck the landing with buckets of action—and many a resonant message to spare. 4.5 stars!

The Heart of the World is the final book in the Isles of the Gods duology, preceded by The Isles of the Gods. Amie Kaufman is the author and co-author of several series for children and young adults, including the Elementals trilogy (Ice Wolves, Scorch Dragons, and Battle Born), the Illuminae Files (co-authored with Jay Kristoff – Illuminae, Gemina, and Obsidio), the Aurora Cycle (co-authored with Jay Kristoff – Aurora Rising, Aurora Burning, and Aurora’s End), the Other Side of the Sky duology (with Meagan Spooner – The Other Side of the Sky and Beyond the End of the World), and many others.

Today’s song:

We Are Lady Parts brought me here…

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 (10/1/24) – Death’s Country

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles, and happy October!

Since today is both in the middle of Latinx Heritage Month and the start of spooky season proper, I figured I would deliver on both fronts. I’d heard a lot of buzz about this one, especially the fact that it had polyamorous representation—something I rarely see in literature, much less in YA. Genre fiction written in verse is also uncommon, so I had to pick up this book since it combined both of them. The result was something that was inventive at every turn.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Death’s Country – R.M. Romero

Andres Santos is ready for a new start. After moving to Miami from São Paulo, he’s keen on leaving his past behind—especially his brush with mortality after nearly drowning and seeing the face of Death itself. He barely escaped by making a deal with Death for a second chance at life. Now, he’s a part of a happy, poly triad, deeply in love with spunky photographer Renee and joyous dancer Liora. But when a car crash puts Liora in a coma, Andres and Renee know that the only option is to confront Andres’ past—by returning to the Underworld where he once bargained for his very life.

TW/CW: car crash/coma, emotional abuse, suicide, self harm, eating disorders, fantasy violence

The minute that David Bowie was mentioned, I tried so hard not to go headfirst into liking this novel. My expectations were average, and I wanted to be surprised. And then “Space Oddity” became a recurring motif. You know me, I ate that up.

For the most part, I’ve rarely seen genre fiction and novels in verse mix. The latter is usually reserved for telling realistic fiction stories and occasional historical fiction, though I’ve only seen one or two examples of the latter. But using this method outside of fiction is something that, now that I’ve read Death’s Country, I feel should be utilized more often. Poetic language lends itself to describe the dark, fantastical setting of this novel and fantastical settings in general, and Romero’s is no exception; even if it doesn’t fill up the entire page, the flowing language renders the setting in luscious detail. Given that romance is also at the beating heart of this novel, Romero’s decision of putting it in verse made the romance feel all the more like the center of the narrative. Once more, her language didn’t just put the spotlight on it—the sparsity of the amount of words on the page truly made it feel like the center of the universe.

Even with the leaps and bounds that literature, mainly YA, has made in terms of queer representation, I’ve seen hardly any with polyamorous representation. (The only other one that I can remember is Iron Widow, which I also recommend!) What I liked about how Death’s Country handled it was that it was a polyamorous story, but that it wasn’t necessarily about polyamory; those stories have a place, but sometimes, the most powerful representation comes from seeing yourself in fantastical stories usually reserved for white, cishet, etc. protagonists. There are great discussions about the stigmas surrounding polyamory (cheating, slut-shaming, etc.), but they were only a part of the story, not the whole. The more that I think about it, a poly triad makes this story work in a way that it might not have with a couple; having two people, not just one, braving the Underworld for their girlfriend in a coma, presented a unique twist on a story that’s been retold countless times, and presented an opportunity to explore multiple perspectives of love under duress.

I went into Death’s Country expecting a meditation on death (obviously), but what I didn’t expect was such an insightful metaphor about how we idealize those we love in death. The Underworld in Death’s Country is almost a vehicle for reproducing what people deem most memorable about them: not just how they die, but how they were seen in death. Liora, who was adored unconditionally by both Andres and Renee, has been molded into a romanticized version of herself that, upon closer inspection, barely resembles the real Liora. Most of that is thanks to the manipulation of The Prince, but we later find out that even he is a reflection of the dark side of Andres’ love—that kind of unquestioning idealization that strips a real person into a glowing facsimile of who they once were. This provided an insight into these kinds of retellings (Death’s Country is a loose retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice) that they don’t normally touch on; death changes the people you love physically, but also mentally—in the perceptions of others that come to define them once their physical body is gone.

However, I feel like Death’s Country could have used a dual POV to execute the emotion to its absolute fullest. The only perspective we get is Andres, while we never get into the headspace of Renee, who is journeying with him through the underworld alongside him for the entire book. I wasn’t as big of a fan of Andres as a protagonist (I found him to be on the abrasive side at worst), but Romero’s writing of him was never sloppy or badly-executed in a technical sense. I just had the strongest sense that Renee had just as much of a story to tell as him! I get that Andres was specifically the one who made a deal with Death for another shot at life, but Liora isn’t just his girlfriend—she’s Renee’s girlfriend too. She needed more backstory, but I have a strong feeling that Death’s Country would have been enhanced if she’d also had more of a voice.

All in all, an inventive, fantastical novel-in-verse with plenty of fresh twists on otherwise well-trodden literary ground. 4 stars!

Death’s Country is a standalone, but R.M. Romero is also the author of The Dollmaker of Krakow, The Ghosts of Rose Hill, A Warning About Swans, and the forthcoming novel Tale of the Flying Forest.

Today’s song:

A NEW CURE ALBUM?? what a time to be alive

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 (9/24/24) – Some Girls Do

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

More importantly, Happy Bisexual Visibility Day…one day late! 🩷💜💙 I figured I would center a bisexual story for this week, and between my readings for school, I’ve been trying to squeeze in some books for this occasion and for Latinx Heritage Month as well. I’ve read a handful of Jennifer Dugan’s other novels, and I can always count on her for a solid queer YA romance. Some Girls Do wasn’t her best work, but when it hit the right notes, it was appropriately sweet.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Some Girls Do – Jennifer Dugan

Ruby Torino is intent on keeping her head down until she graduates high school. Even though she’s sick of competing in beauty pageants to appease her mother, she knows that it’s the only way out—the next one’s prize is a scholarship to a community college. There, she can be openly bisexual and not have to please her parents. But when Morgan Matthews, an out-and-proud athlete who was kicked out of her Catholic school after they found out she was a lesbian, transfers to Ruby’s school, her world is turned upside down. Against all odds, the girls end up falling for each other. But Ruby can’t risk coming out—and Morgan can’t seem to let it go.

TW/CW: homophobia, biphobia, verbal and emotional abuse, pressure to come out

Some Girls Do wasn’t a perfect romance, but it was about imperfect people, and for half of the main cast, it worked out. It didn’t blow me away, but it was a solid read for Bisexual Visibility Week!

I wasn’t a fan of both members of the couple (more on that later), but Ruby was such an excellently complicated protagonist! All of her life, she’s been in a volatile position, what with her mother, who had her when she was a teenager, pressuring her into competing in beauty pageants to fulfill the dream she never got to live out herself. Between that and her abusive, homophobic father, she’s learned to guard herself, making her outward personality prickly and unapproachable, even as she blends in with the popular crowd. She’s far from a perfect person, and yet I found myself rooting for her in a way that I couldn’t bring myself to root for Morgan; Ruby’s struggles were tangible and her victories hard-won, and the biggest aspect that kept me reading Some Girls Do was the desire to see her dreams fulfilled.

I find that there’s a limbo that a good amount of queer media doesn’t talk about in terms of environments that people can grow up in. The hometown of Ruby and Morgan is in an in-between place: on paper, it’s mildly liberal and accepting, but there’s still a stigma around queer people. The high school has a pride club, but its members fear holding hands in the hallways. Some of Morgan’s friends act supportive, yet turn up their noses at the idea of the pride club. It’s a dynamic that I haven’t seen explored in queer media often, and Dugan did such a wonderful job in both portraying it and shedding a light on it. Like Ruby and Morgan’s relationship, it’s uncertain what the next day will bring, but there are pockets of unconditional shelter and safety if you look hard enough.

With that out of the way…Morgan. I was not a fan of her. To Dugan’s credit, it’s shown pretty clearly where she’s coming from; by being out, she’s had to risk everything, and is adamant that those who wronged her are proven wrong. But in being so out and proud, she comes off as callous and selfish in all of the wrong ways. When she and Ruby are trying to make it work, she continually pressures Ruby to come out, seemingly oblivious to the very real consequences that could befall her if her parents found out that she was bisexual. Even in her staunch “warrior defending the LGBTQ+ community” stance, she somehow completely forgot that not everyone has the privilege to be openly queer. There was some reconciliation of her attitude and said privilege towards the last part of the book, but in the end, it felt like too little too late.

In concept, Ruby and Morgan’s relationship was cute; once they got into a good rhythm, they had moments of quiet, tender bonding and sweet banter in equal measure. Yet despite Dugan’s efforts to make it work, the way that Morgan was written made it so that it never fully landed. It felt as though no matter how hard they fell for each other, Morgan would never accept that Ruby wasn’t comfortable with public being her girlfriend; even though there were moments at the Pride Club meant for Morgan to learn the error of her ways, she continued to pressure Ruby to do things that weren’t just uncomfortable but unsafe for her. If you took all of that out of the equation, they had some solid chemistry. But Morgan’s unwillingness to accept that Ruby had to stay closeted for her safety made the foundations of what could have been a good romance fold. Encouraging your partner to put her safety in jeopardy is decidedly not romantic.

All in all, a sapphic romance starring some girls that were thoughtfully written and easy to root for, but some girls that were too selfish to even try to like. 3.5 stars!

Some Girls Do is a standalone, but Jennifer Dugan is also the author of several other novels for YA and Adult audiences, including Hot Dog Girl, Melt With You, Verona Comics, The Last Girls Standing, Love at First Set, and many more.

Today’s song:

I’m SO glad my shuffle brought this one out of the depths, I forgot how much I loved it :.)

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