Tag: 4 stars

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (9/29/26) – Sunward

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

It feels like this is my first time reading William Alexander, but technically it isn’t. My first experience of his writing was ages ago; I picked up his MG novel Goblin Secrets when I was about 10 or 11 (I think? My memory’s hazy on it, to be honest) and didn’t like it. But I wasn’t the best judge of taste back then (even if the average ratings for Goblin Secrets are rather low), and plus, Sunward was his first book for adults, and things are bound to have changed.

For whatever reason, it’s so difficult to find sci-fi books by Latine authors. I don’t know if it’s the publishing industry or some other thing, but I feel like for Latine authors specifically, they’re so few and far between. That’s part of why I was so excited to see Sunward out in the wild. I’m so glad to report that although past Madeline didn’t like Goblin Secrets, Sunward is not to be missed.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Sunward – William Alexander

When faced with the decision to follow in her parents’s footsteps as interplanetary politicians, Tova Lir chose a quieter life. She works as an interstellar courier, ferrying private communications across the solar system. But her spaceship doubles as a nursery—Tova raises sentient AIs whose consciousnesses are still on the levels of children and teenagers. When Agatha Panza von Sparkles (she named herself), one of her AI wards, experiences the splintering of her consciousness, Tova has to seek answers in the last place that she wants to go: Earth’s moon, where a deadly explosion has been pinned on its robot population. With the help from her former AI wards, Tova must cross the solar system to save Agatha’s mind from disappearing entirely.

TW/CW: racism, child death, descriptions of injury

Sunward clearly felt like a first-time attempt at a sci-fi novel; there’s less emphasis on the hard mechanics of the worldbuilding, and even with the strong AI element, it rarely veers into any grounded science. Even as a certified sci-fi girlie, that’s not a dig at William Alexander in the slightest. In fact, that’s part of why I loved Sunward so much. It wasn’t burdened by any of the rigid genre conventions that some authors adhere to, and it frequently bucked against what sci-fi is “supposed to be.” Alexander was unafraid to make his solar system unabashedly quirky—it almost felt like Wes Anderson’s take on straight-up sci-fi post-Asteroid City, from the precocious characters to the charm of the solar system’s cultures. There’s a sun-based cult on Mercury. The Moon has wacky mushroom architecture. The gang runs into a theater troupe of mostly robots that perform Twelfth Night in sign language. There’s a pretentious poet and her screaming parrot. Some of the more deliberately twee bits (ex. Agatha Panza von Sparkles) did get grating at times, but for the most part, it made for such a delightful novel. It’s just so charming and strange, and I loved every second of being in Alexander’s new solar system.

As a whole, the worldbuilding of Sunward was a mixed bag. But something that Alexander really excelled at in this novel was the cultural aspects of the worldbuilding. Our solar system is flung far into the future, with human settlements on many of the planets familiar to us, but each of them felt so culturally distinct. Alexander did such an amazing job feel like every planet’s people was unique, and even within the planets, giving them different groups and points of conflict. The same goes for his depictions of human-robot relations; they also differed from planet to planet, but different characters had different culturally specific reasons for the positions that they had. In particular, I loved the whole group of people isolated on a spaceship that developed their own sign language after an illness rendered most of the crew Deaf—that was a fascinating aspect, and I loved that unique inclusion in the novel. It was just so clear that there was tons of thought put into this future vision of the solar system, and I loved it.

Of course, you all know that I’m a sucker for found family. It’s old news at this point, but loving stories like this has made me picky about which ones actually feel like family. Sunward, in the end, knocked it out of the park. Tova was such a strong character, and I loved that her stoic outward presence didn’t contradict the love that she had for her robot children and the people around her—in fact, it only enhanced the protectiveness she felt for them. She was a great protagonist, but the side characters made this novel shine even more. Sunward’s dynamic was way more of a dysfunctional found family, which is pretty much par for the course, considering that this novel is basically just a solar system-wide quest to reunite all of Tova’s AI children. Tova’s getting the band back together, and it…doesn’t go to plan. Alexander did a great job of meshing all of the characters’s clashing desires and making this found family painfully chaotic, but still funny. It’s very much “we’ve all been tossed together in this spaceship with a vague common goal, and we all have to tough it out,” but by the end, in spite of all the squabbling, they stick together. That being said, a lot of the characters were too underdeveloped for it to fully feel like a family until the last few chapters. I would’ve loved Sunward to be longer for several reasons, and this was the most prominent one for sure. But for what it was, Sunward’s resonant love for family and sympathy for outsiders made it a tenderly emotional novel.

Unfortunately, that first-time sci-fi writer element that I praised earlier dragged Sunward down in some places. While I was willing to suspend my disbelief for a lot of this novel, there was a complete lack of context for a few too many of the worldbuilding elements. Sunward is set in our solar system, but the only context that Alexander gives us is that we’re “far in the future.” We don’t know the year, how many centuries it’s been since we’ve colonized the stars, and how long that took. Listen—I don’t need all of the answers, but given that Earth has been abandoned for nebulous reasons, we still retain some pop culture from antiquated Earth eras, and there’s some semblance of advanced technology, it would’ve helped to have at least a rough timeline of how we colonized the solar system, and more importantly, why. The same would’ve helped with some context around the human-robot tensions, but that was at least easier to extrapolate from context clues; still, I would’ve liked more than just vibes and ideas that haven’t been hashed over in other robot-related sci-fi. Granted, I thoroughly enjoyed Sunward, but it desperately needed some more ground to stand on in terms of the worldbuilding.

All in all, a heartfelt and quirky vision of our solar system in the future, and the love that brings people together within it. 4 stars!

Sunward is a standalone and William Alexander’s first novel for adults. He is also the author of several other books for children, including Goblin Secrets, Ghoulish Song, Ambassador, Nomad, A Properly Unhaunted Place, and A Festival of Ghosts.

Today’s song:

I’ve finally listened to Cate Le Bon’s entire discography (album-wise)…Me Oh My is my least favorite, but it’s still so fun

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 (9/22/26) – Blue-Skinned Gods

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles, and happy fall equinox/bisexual visibility day eve!

Since this week is Bisexual Visibility Week, I figured I would read some books to supercharge my own bisexuality celebrate the occasion. I’m normally not a huge literary fiction reader, but I read SJ Sindu’s graphic novel Tall Water back in May and really enjoyed it, so I figured I’d give more of their works a try. Blue-Skinned Gods turned out to be quite an impactful novel!

Enjoy this week’s review!

Blue-Skinned Gods – SJ Sindu

Kalki was born with sky-blue skin. His parents, believing he is the reincarnation of the god Vishnu, set up an ashram where they make a living off of Kalki’s supposed healing powers. As Kalki gets older, the cracks in his identity and his father’s manipulation of him begin to grow. But on a pilgrimage to New York City, Kalki discovers that the carefully-constructed narrative of his life may not live up to what his father made them out to be, and that the only way to discover his true nature—godly, human, or something else entirely—is to break free of his father’s grip.

TW/CW: child abuse, religious bigotry, cancer, loss of loved ones, emotional & physical abuse, sexual content, suicide, attempted murder

There’s a moment that I particularly liked in Blue-Skinned Gods that, to me, exemplifies the best qualities of SJ Sindu’s writing. When Kalki first arrives in New York City, he describes the traffic as rivaling that of India, with the rickshaws replaced by yellow cabs. It struck me, and it really made me laugh—I feel like a lot of the Orientalist rhetoric that we hear about India is about how crowded and unclean the streets are and how out of control the traffic is, and this passage felt like a slap upside the head to all of those tropes. But Sindu didn’t write it necessarily as such: it was just how Kalki processed his first experiences of the city. The impact of that observation was how a lot of the themes were delivered—everything had layers of satire, nuance, and emotion, and it just felt downright clever. Sindu’s writing engrossed me in the setting and delivered its messages all folded up into one: neither was separate from the other, and that’s what sets their writing apart to me.

Sindu’s buildup of Kalki’s character was one of the strongest aspects of this novel. His narrative voice, with his strong sense of justice and deep sensitivity to the corruption of the world around him, gave the novel a very tender aspect, especially considering the cruel hand that he and his family and friends were dealt. Kalki deals with his fair share of trauma, and Sindu did an excellent job of depicting it respectfully and not milking it into gratuitous trauma porn. (That being said, take heed of the trigger warnings. Blue-Skinned Gods is definitely a difficult novel to read.) There was a kind of innocence to him, but it was rooted in his belief of justice and his godly duty to right the wrongs of the world. Once he breaks away from his abusive father’s grip and comes into his own, his journey to true self-discovery was heartbreaking and heartwarming; on the one hand, Sindu’s portrayal of everything he’s built his life on come crumbling down almost instantaneously was just plain sad, but seeing Kalki’s rocky journey towards advocating for himself and not letting himself be manipulated by other people was so fulfilling. It’s clear that Sindu put so much love into Kalki, and every page was proof.

Strangely, I feel like Blue-Skinned Gods isn’t as much about religion in the end—it plays a part, but not the whole. It’s about people wanting to believe in something so desperately that they’re willing to do callous things to the people caught in the crossfire. Kalki’s childhood is stripped away just because his father knows the power of people who just want to see miracles—and because his father knows that it’s profitable to bring false miracles to people. When Kalki escapes to New York City and finds refuge in Lakshman and his band, he’s told that his father has been using him, but then gets manipulated by the band so that they can profit off of his identity as well, just in a different way. I think it’s also about how otherness is seen as profitable, and how when the othered person doesn’t want to be commodified, they become something to despise and fear in the eyes of the majority. Sindu had so much to say with Blue-Skinned Gods, but for the most part, she did an excellent job of addressing it without it coming off preachy—the narrative just lended itself to so many ethical and emotional questions, and Sindu navigated all of them with aplomb.

For the most part, Blue-Skinned Gods was such a strong book. Sindu was willing to let the reader absorb the weight of all the emotions in this novel, even though it spans around 20 years and there are a lot of events to dwell on. However, the same kindness was not shown to the ending. Without spoiling anything, it felt like such a climactic moment chock full of complicated and horrific emotions, like many of the events throughout Kalki’s life. There’s so much buildup, and then it’s over and done in about a page, as is the emotional fallout. It was an ending that made me think that there were at least 5-10 more pages, but it just ended—that was it? Why did this moment not get the same treatment as the rest of the traumatic events in this novel? It didn’t take away from my rating of this novel, but I feel like it needed more room to breathe, and much too abrupt for something so emotionally charged.

All in all, an affecting novel of religion, identity, and the lengths you’re willing to go to just to believe in something. 4 stars!

Blue-Skinned Gods is a standalone, but SJ Sindu is also the author of several other books for children, teens, and adults, including Marriage of a Thousand Lies, The Goth House Experiment, Tall Water (with Dion MBD), and Shakti. They also contributed to the anthology Be Gay, Do Crime.

Today’s song:

IT’S FINALLY 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 (5/5/26) – Saltcrop

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

GUESS WHO’S BACK…WITH A BACHELOR’S DEGREE! 🎓 YIPPEE!! Either way, I’ll be back to my normal posting schedule for the foreseeable future, as I’m now done with finals and all of my graduation festivities.

I’ve been a fan of Yume Kitasei since her debut, The Deep Sky. Her second novel, The Stardust Grail, was a 5-star read for me—it’s truly a gem, if you haven’t read it already. (After re-reading it last month, I’m firmly convinced that we need another book set in that universe. Her worldbuilding was so expansive!! It needs a companion novel!! Please!!) So I was ecstatic to hear that she was writing another sci-fi novel. It seems she’s been jumping between all kinds of sci-fi subgenres: a literary thriller with The Deep Sky, space opera with The Stardust Grail, and now dystopia with Saltcrop. And though it didn’t blow me away like The Stardust Grail did, Saltcrop is still a worthy, timely testament to Kitasei’s talents.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Saltcrop – Yume Kitasei

In a world ravaged by climate change, the three Shimizu sisters–Nora, Carmen, and Skipper—eke out a living with their aging grandmother. But Nora has been missing for months without an explanation. Carmen has faith that Nora will turn up soon, but Skipper suspects foul play. The sisters voyage out into uncertain waters to find Nora, but when they stumble into an intricate conspiracy that’s more than they bargained for, they must decide whether the journey was worth it at all—and if Nora is even out there in the first place.

TW/CW: medical content, body horror, death of parents, abuse, violence, murder, illness, animal death, chronic illness themes

One of the coolest things about watching Yume Kitasei’s career expand, from a reader’s perspective, is her willingness to try almost anything within the sci-fi genre. Her first novel was a more literary, sci-fi thriller; her second, a daring space opera with influences from Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Saltcrop is wholly different than both of them, and perhaps the greatest thing about it is that Kitasei never seems to run out of ideas, and that she’s unafraid to chase them.

Saltcrop is full of heart, and to me, that was its main strength. What formed this heart was the central relationship between Skipper, Carmen, and Nora. Even though 1/3 sisters was notably missing for 2/3rds of the novel, her presence was palpable; all that was possible due to the subtle interactions that Kitasei wove through Skipper and Carmen, both past and present. Their clashing but united dynamic as sisters propelled the novel in such a poignant way. Though you know from the start that Skipper and Carmen would cross the ocean for their sister (and they do), Kitasei never falters in giving you the sense of the complex but steadfast love that they have for each other. It feels like a middle finger to all of the dystopian media that posits that the apocalypse will somehow deteriorate our inherently human urge to love and help each other. Siblings will be siblings, even when climate change floods the world—Kitasei means that in every sense possible.

The setting of Saltcrop is familiar: a flooded dystopian world rendered unrecognizable by climate change, where the poor eke out a hardened existence while the rich continue to get richer. It’s a plot we’ve heard many times before, but Kitasei’s touch made it much more human. Aside from the exploration of the sisters’s relationships, I think what made Saltcrop’s plot and worldbuilding so memorable were the vignettes that made it human. Kitasei’s flooded world was peppered with stories of ordinary people, dead and alive, who made a living in spite of nearly inhospitable circumstances. It doesn’t shy away from the dark and ugly parts of this world (namely the spread of illness and corporate greed) Combine that with the clearly exhaustive research she did about agriculture, epidemiology, and genetic modification that got especially relevant in the last half of the novel, and Saltcrop was one of the most lived-in dystopias that I’ve read in quite some time.

I said earlier that Saltcrop is fairly different from her previous two novels, but in terms of writing, I think it trends closer to The Deep Sky, which is to say that it leans more into the literary side of her prose. And if there’s anybody I trust with more literary prose, it’s Kitasei. Her eye for poignant, needle-sharp descriptions that lodge themselves into your heart is stronger than ever—there are casual gut-punches laid about everywhere. Even in the heart of a climate-ravaged dystopia, there were almost Fargo-like interludes where reality and memory warp, which was all the more potent considering the themes of remembrance in Saltcrop. (The bear scene in the middle especially comes to mind.) Like the plot, Kitasei’s prose turned an environment that we’ve seen many times before into something wholly fresh and enlivened.

I’ll admit, I have some mixed feelings about the ending. On the one hand, I loved how the sisters rallied together to try and bring down the antagonist corporation, which routinely swallowed all of their attempts at resisting; the gradual, quiet victory was hopeful, and felt realistic to the long and rocky road to justice that we see with these kinds of issues. However, I feel like there were so many unanswered questions at the end; without spoiling anything, it felt like the setup to another novel, but there was so much left unsolved and unsaid, and yet Kitasei gave it the tone of a bittersweet ending, but a concrete ending all the same. It only felt wrapped up in the sense of the corporation plot, but beyond that, it felt unfinished. I’m all for an ambiguous ending, but with such a key piece of the puzzle missing, it didn’t feel satisfying in the slightest.

All in all, a startlingly human post-apocalyptic story of sisterhood and survival. 4 stars!

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

Today’s song:

genuinely criminal that this isn’t available on streaming, but this is, hands down, one of the best Wilco covers out there

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 (3/10/26) – To Ride a Rising Storm (Nampeshiweisit, #2)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I fully thought I reviewed the first book in this series…whoops. Did I just hallucinate writing a book review? In 10-ish years of writing book reviews, I guess it was bound to happen…

Suffice to say, I really enjoyed To Shape a Dragon’s Breath—it filled the void left by Harry Potter and rekindled my love for good old magic school YA, but without having to remember that J.K Rowling exists. To Shape a Dragon’s Breath is unabashedly Indigenous and queer, with a witty, delightful protagonist, a lovable supporting cast, and potent commentary on racism and colonization. And did I mention the dragons? Naturally, I was excited to see what the sequel had in store. And for the most part, To Ride a Rising Storm was a very rewarding sequel, full of the same heart that endeared me to book one.

Now, tread lightly! This review contains spoilers for book one, To Shape a Dragon’s Breath. If you haven’t read it and plan on doing so, you may want to skip this review.

Let’s begin, shall we?

To Ride a Rising Storm (Nampeshiweisit, #2) – Moniquill Blackgoose

Anequs has survived her first year at Kuiper Academy. Eager to return home with Theod, her only other indigenous classmate…who she may be developing feelings for. She intends to spend her summer break with her family, but what she returns home to is quite the opposite. The Anglish have begun to encroach on her homeland. Anequs is determined to assert her people’s right to govern themselves, but before she can intervene, she’s swept back to Kuiper Academy for another semester. With new friends and enemies, Anequs is determined to not let the idiosyncratic, nonsensical rules of Anglish society beat her down. But with a looming political threat mounting outside of her school, Anequs’s peace might be short-lived.

TW/CW: racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, colonialism, classism, violence, descriptions of injury

I love the Nampeshiweisit series—both books have been a delight to read. But for both books, I’ve been slightly torn about the worldbuilding. What you have to know right off the bat is that it’s not subtle, but also that it’s not trying to be subtle. Anequs and her people are Native American-coded, and the English stand-in is quite literally Anglish. You can see where we’re going here. But I wouldn’t be reading book two of this series if I wasn’t on board with it; and to be fair, the Anglish are basically a hybrid of England and a lot of Scandinavian countries in terms of their culture and folklore, even though they play the role of the English here.

However, I appreciate it more in the sense that it’s a political statement rather than a worldbuilding one—Blackgoose isn’t here to beat around the bush here when it comes to critiquing colonialism. Once you get past the names, there’s a rich fantasy world to be found here. It’s a world of dragons and secret societies and magic, and Blackgoose does an excellent job of explaining how they’re integrated into this world, and how they’ve affected geopolitics; this book gets even more into the politics of the world, which I greatly enjoyed. Plus, if you’re sick of how said magic schools have handled diversity (you all know who I’m talking about here), there’s so much diversity here, be it queer, POC, or disabled characters. And none of it feels like ticking off boxes—it all feels like how marginalized people would have lived and acted historically in a multicultural space.

One of the parts I most enjoyed about To Shape a Dragon’s Breath was Anequs herself. She’s just such a spirited and downright delightful protagonist, but one that easily holds her own against the obstacles that she faces. The Nampeshiweisit series is one that I’d recommend to readers of all ages, honestly, but especially younger readers who have just reached the age range of YA, and one of the main reasons I’d recommend it to younger readers (especially young girls) is Anequs. She’s such a good role model for young women, especially young, queer women of color: she’s determined, smart, and takes both her peers and the authorities to task for their racism and colonialism. Her personality practically bursts off the page. She isn’t without her flaws, either, and all the better—young girls are better off with role models who aren’t perfect. But so much of the draw for this series is how much I love being in her head and going on adventures with her and Kasaqua. Blackgoose really struck gold with Anequs—she’s a memorable protagonist in every way.

To Ride a Rising Storm was more character-driven than its predecessor, and for the most part, it greatly benefitted from it. For most of the novel, there’s not any hardcore, climactic action, but there are so many parts of the world and other cultures that get fleshed out that I can’t complain…mostly. (More on that later.) Either way, I loved the development of Anequs and her friends, old and new. Blackgoose’s characters are just so charming and compelling, and I loved that we got more page time with them. Jadzia was a great new addition, and I loved what she added to the friendship dynamic with Anequs, Theod, Sander, and the others. The glimpses we get of those on the margins of Anglish society outside of Kuiper Academy made the world feel even realer—there were so many pockets that we hadn’t seen before, and Blackgoose’s prose made me so much more immersed into the setting. Though some of the other parts of the book suffered from this focus, To Ride a Rising Storm felt like it was there to make the world more real.

However, there are drawbacks to having a book just for making the world feel more immersive. I’m torn about To Ride a Rising Storm because although I loved reading every second of it, there was a very clear pacing issue. While I enjoyed the more cozy, somewhat low-stakes approach that this book had, it was paced quite unevenly. We get some very serious action and stakes, but they aren’t introduced until halfway through the book. The final battle is crammed into the last 3% of the novel—I checked on my Kindle when this huge battle went down, and it started at the 97% mark! For a moment this climactic, it was introduced far too late. It just didn’t quite feel like Blackgoose quite knew whether she wanted to make this novel fully cozy or low stakes; either commit to the coziness or give the stakes more weight throughout the rest of the novel. Again, I enjoyed the pace until I didn’t—the last quarter of the novel proved that there was a serious issue with imbalance.

All in all, a worthy sequel with timely political commentary, tender friendships, and one of YA fantasy’s most memorable protagonists today. 4 stars!

To Ride a Rising Storm is the second book in the Nampeshiweisit series, preceded by To Shape a Dragon’s Breath.

Today’s song:

prepping myself to see Jeff Tweedy this friday…thanks to my dad for this one!

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 (3/3/26) – Red Star Rebels

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

BEFORE I BEGIN: as this is a bookish space, I feel that it’s essential to bring this to your attention. Here in the States, H.R. 7661 (misleadingly named the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act”) presents a grave danger to libraries and our freedom to read as Americans. This legislation, as many similar ones are, is presented under the guise of “protecting children” from sexually explicit material, but we all know what it targets in reality: fiction and nonfiction about queer people, people of color, and other marginalized groups. EveryLibrary has both a petition to oppose H.R. 7661 and instructions to call your representatives. Excluding stories of marginalized people doesn’t protect anybody. Protect our freedom to read!

It’s 2019. I’m about to finish my first year of high school, and I’m excited to buy the new Amie Kaufman book.

It’s 2026. I’m about to finish my last year of college, and I’m excited to buy the new Amie Kaufman book.

Needless to say, longtime followers of this blog (and longtime friends of mine in general) know how pivotal of a role Amie Kaufman has played in my life. Her sci-fi and fantasy novels have been a positive constant for seven years and counting, especially the Aurora Cycle. I was over the moon to find out that she was returning to science fiction after a long stint focusing on fantasy. And though it wasn’t as emotionally potent as some of her other novels, Red Star Rebels was an action-packed and romantic blast all the way through!

Enjoy this week’s review!

Red Star Rebels – Amie Kaufman

Hunter Graves has Mars in the palm of his hand. As the grandson of the man who settled Mars, he’s got it made. If only the rest of his family would actually pay him any mind. But when he’s trapped on the U.N. base after a mysterious attack, he’ll have to use more than his name to get out alive.

Cleo just wanted to stow away on this U.N. base to get the Earth gangs off her back and make a quick buck. Having to stow away with Hunter Graves when the base goes on lockdown was not part of the plan. But they’ll have to work together for eight hours before a bomb detonates, killing everybody on the base. And neither of them counted on falling for each other…

TW/CW: violence, loss of loved ones (past), fire

I’m a huge fan of Zoë Van Dijk’s artwork and I love her cover art for the U.S. edition of Red Star Rebels, but…I can’t unsee the fact that Cleo is doing the Dreamworks face. It haunts me. The thing is, it’s 100% in character for her, which almost haunts me even more.

The main draw for Red Star Rebels is that it’s a pulse-pounding action thriller in space; Kaufman has compared it to Die Hard and Home Alone in equal measure, in reference to both the atmosphere and the amount of interstellar hijinks. All of the events of Red Star Rebels happen in the span of 8 hours (the time it’ll take for the U.N. base to detonate), and it really does feel like it’s all crammed into such a short amount of time. Be prepared to be gripping the edge of your seat, because this novel moves fast—and this is the exact type of novel that needs to go at breakneck speed. The pacing is impeccable. The only drawback is that Red Star Rebels sacrificed some of the emotional potency that I come to expect with your typical Amie Kaufman novel. There’s a reason that her books are normally so thick—she doesn’t hesitate to get in the weeds with character development and poignant arcs. Though Hunter and Cleo’s relationship was charming as ever, some of the emotional aspects of this novel were quite rushed in comparison to her other novels, and I think that can exactly be chalked up to the uncharacteristically short page count—288 pages, in comparison to her often 400+ page whoppers. While the pacing worked for the plot, it didn’t work all the way for the characters—give it at least 50 more, and I think this would’ve been near perfect. That being said, even a weaker Amie Kaufman book is guaranteed to be a cut above the rest, so I’m not complaining.

Every time there’s a chance for Amie Kaufman to write a relationship dynamic where one’s a scrappy criminal and the other is a spoiled, rich brat (both of whom secretly have a heart of gold), by God, she’ll take it (see also: Selly and Lysander from Isles of the Gods, Lilac and Tarver from These Broken Stars, Nik and Hanna from Gemina, etc.). And do I eat it up every time? Absolutely. At least she switches the genders up. It’s a blatant pattern at this point, but she writes it so compellingly that I’m not even that mad. Would I like for her to mix it up a little? Sure, but this is Amie Kaufman we’re talking about—no matter what kind of relationships she’s writing, they’re always so charming and heartstring-tugging, so I’m not here to complain. The setup for Cleo and Hunter’s relationship was a perfect storm, but Kaufman did such an excellent job of making the development of their relationship realistic—it’s a survival situation spaced over eight hours, but never at any point did their romance feel too rushed. They were trapped together with very little interaction from the outside world (other than the antagonists), and there was plenty of time for their chemistry to develop. All in all, it’s another slam dunk from Kaufman—Cleo and Hunter were so sassy, and yes, made for each other. Plus, I’ve loved Kaufman’s casual queer inclusion, especially in terms of bisexuality. Beyond that, it’s so, so important to show that straight-passing relationships are just as valid and still queer, so I’m very grateful to Red Star Rebels for showcasing this!

Red Star Rebels should be a masterclass in why you shouldn’t underestimate the craft that goes into good YA novels. The best part about Amie Kaufman’s books is that sure, they look like cheesy YA (and in some ways, they are, but tastefully so) on the surface, but 9 times out of 10, they’re Trojan horses for top-notch, exhaustively researched worldbuilding. Aside from the Illuminae Files, Red Star Rebels might honestly be some of the hardest science fiction that she’s ever written. There was a ton of thought put into the physics and logistics of establishing colonies on Mars, and every aspect was pored over in exceptional detail, from the nutrients you’d need to survive on Mars to how the gravity affects the red planet’s permanent residents. Not only that, Kaufman goes headfirst into discussing the geopolitics of international Mars settlements. All of this fed into some great commentary on corporate space exploration and how corporations have unjustly been able to buy their way into influencing world politics. Kaufman’s vision of 2067 is basically what would happen if Elon Musk—[ahem] Graves had his way with things, and the commentary was an excellent way to scaffold the worldbuilding.

Back to Cleo and Hunter—as well as the worldbuilding—what I really appreciate about Kaufman’s class-divided relationship dynamics is that the less privileged person in the couple doesn’t sacrifice their values. There’s some potent class commentary in Red Star Rebels, and I love Hunter’s arc in seeing that their colonialism has consequences, and that the exceptionalism of his family came at a bloody cost. There’s also some sharp commentary on how poor people have to circumvent the law in order to make a living and are punished for it, but rich people use the same methods and get away scot-free—for instance, Cleo and Hunter ending up on the U.N. base in the exact same way, but Cleo being the only one who would be theoretically imprisoned for it. There’s a fine line in these dynamics where the poorer person in the couple ends up excusing the power imbalance and the narrative ignoring any issues of class disparity and the circumstances that made them so, but Kaufman is always right on the money (no pun intended) with imbuing her relationships with a strong sense of justice and class commentary.

All in all, another win for Amie Kaufman, full of outer space hijinks, crafty characters, and romance. 4 stars!

Red Star Rebels is a standalone, but Amie Kaufman is the author of several other books for children and teens, including the Isles of the Gods duology (The Isles of the Gods and The Heart of the World), The Illuminae Files (with Jay Kristoff; Illuminae, Gemina, and Obsidio), The Aurora Cycle (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 more. Her next book, co-authored with Meagan Spooner, is One Knight Stand, the sequel to Lady’s Knight, which is slated for release on June 4th, 2026.

Today’s song:

gonna be honest…I wasn’t a huge fan of The Mountain, but this song was fantastic, so it’s not a complete loss.

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 (2/17/26) – The King Must Die

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Confession time: I was not a fan of Kemi Ashing-Giwa’s debut, The Splinter in the Sky. I didn’t think I would read any of her other books. But my hunger for sci-fi knows no bounds, and when I saw this, I was intrigued enough by the premise to give her writing a second shot. Thankfully, the gamble paid off—The King Must Die was an unexpected delight, full of rebellion, blood, and the friendships that somehow spring up from those other two things.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The King Must Die – Kemi Ashing-Giwa

Newearth was once humanity’s last hope, a planet terraformed by incomprehensible, alien overlords. Now, it’s on the verge of destruction, with dwindling resources divided unfairly amongst the struggling poor and the Sovereign that rules over them. What’s more, the Sovereign has the power of the omnipotent, alien Executors on their side, willing to do their divine bidding at a moment’s notice, leaving a path of destruction in their wake. Fen, the daughter of anti-imperialist rebels, is on the run after the assassination of her fathers. With a target on her back, she flees for a neighboring rebel faction. But when Alekhai, the ruthless heir to the Sovereign, stumbles directly into the plans of the rebellion, Fen is faced with a brutal choice: join forces with him, or let the rebellion fall prey to the Sovereign.

TW/CW: murder, loss of loved ones, gore, blood, violence, descriptions of injuries, torture

I almost passed on this novel when I saw that it was by the same author as The Splinter in the Sky. But sometimes, every once in a while, it’s worth it to give an author another chance; if not for second chances, I wouldn’t have loved Grace Curtis’s Floating Hotel, for instance! I’m glad I took the chance with Kemi Ashing-Giwa, because The King Must Die was an action-packed, adrenaline-filled story of rebellion and intrigue.

My issue with The Splinter in the Sky was that the story did not feel original. A recurring thought I had while reading it was that it had poorly copied A Memory Called Empire‘s homework—there wasn’t enough about the story that was original. I can excuse some of it, since this was her debut novel, but debut novels can have a story that doesn’t border on being a rip-off. That being said, I do remember liking some of Ashing-Giwa’s prose. Thankfully, she’s worked on both of those fronts, creating an original story to go with said prose, and the prose itself has been leveled up significantly! Ashing-Giwa had such a vibrant way of describing the imagined world of Newearth and the many people within it, so much so that I could easily see myself walking through its war-torn jungles. Her dialogue is snappy without being corny, and her metaphors added a poetic flair to an often bloody and dreary landscape. The King Must Die is a marked improvement from Ashing-Giwa’s debut, fleshing out what I felt lacked in her writing on the first time around.

Whenever I say that an adult novel is a good transitory novel between YA and Adult age groups, it always seems backhanded. I guess that’s because literary circles still turn their noses up at YA for the most part. Listen—even though I’ve aged out of the target audience, I read a fair amount of YA (although adult novels have eclipsed them), I write YA, and I have a deep respect for it as an age group (it’s not a genre!). There’s a difference between YA (novels that genuinely portray the complex emotions of teenagers and their circumstances) and YA (tropey slop banking on the latest fanfiction/TV trends). And I think there’s something about The King Must Die that felt like it could be an excellent book to introduce older teens to more adult genre fiction. Sure, the kill count and amount of blood in general is very much adult, but Ashing-Giwa hits that balance between the political intrigue that’s more present in Adult novels with the character drama that I associate more with YA. It has the fast pace that I associate with some of my favorite YA sci-fi romps that I ate up in high school, but with a level of maturity that would have been lost on me at that time. It’s difficult to balance this kind of complicated worldbuilding and politics while also having this character drama, but The King Must Die had both in spades.

The main part that felt YA (affectionate) to me was the character dynamics. The dynamic between Fen and Alekhai is a classic YA setup; she’s a runaway rebel, and he’s the heir to the empire she wants to destroy. Will sparks fly? …no, evidently, but they did make for some seriously compelling character dynamics. I appreciated that, although there were multiple opportunities for Fen to be paired off with any number of characters, all of them were platonic, and they still gave me that juicy, delectable drama that’s usually only reserved for romances. Fen had such excellent chemistry with Mettan, Sinjara, and the other rebels, but what stood out the most was her relationship with Alekhai. I love a good redemption story for a villain, but it’s even more impressive given how much that Ashing-Giwa establishes about him that honestly…shouldn’t be that redeemable. But his development over the course of the story culminated in something so emotional, and the slow cracking of his shell from a ruthless, indestructible royal to someone who only wanted love in return was incredibly poignant.

The King Must Die is still sci-fi for sure, but I’d place it somewhere in the nebulous category of space fantasy. There are some elements that solidly ground it in science fiction: the alien Makers and their terraformed planet, for one, but also some of the technology. However, much of the action that we see on the ground was very fantasy, what with battles waged with intricate swords and quarterstaffs. I loved the strange, often horrifying beasts that we encounter throughout, though I would’ve liked explanations about how they fit into the ecosystems; we get a lot of tidbits of creatures that supposedly went extinct centuries ago, but are showing up for…reasons, and are never brought up again. As a whole, there were a handful of holes in the parts of the worldbuilding that didn’t relate to a) the politics or b) the terraformed Newearth, but for the most part, the world of The King Must Die was a compelling one without a doubt.

In general, I liked the ending and the epilogue; on a more technical level, Ashing-Giwa is excellent at writing battle scenes that really pump up your adrenaline. Some of the imagery, as well as Askrynath’s dialogue, reminded me of the final battle in the throne room in Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which, if you know me well, is a compliment of the highest order. Conceptually, I like how the ending and epilogue resolved—through selflessness and collective community work, the empire was dismantled and a more fair system was set up on Newearth. However, it felt wrapped up far too neatly. An empire that size—especially one with the backing of incomprehensibly all-powerful aliens—doesn’t crumble in a day. I wanted to see more of the messiness of rebuilding a new world in the ashes of the old one—the transition just felt too clean to be realistic. To be fair, The King Must Die is already pushing 500 pages, so I get it if that didn’t make the final cut. Nonetheless, it was a satisfying ending—just too satisfying for my liking, and for the tone of the story itself.

All in all, a sci-fi adventure that balanced genuine political critique with fast-paced action and dramatic, snappy dialogue—it’s rare to find a book that succeeds with both. 4 stars!

The King Must Die is a standalone, but Kemi Ashing-Giwa is also the author of The Splinter in the Sky and the novella This World Is Not Yours.

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 (10/21/25) – Failure to Communicate

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I found out about this book earlier this year while looking for more sci-fi with queer and/or disabled rep (as I always am). This book seemed to have nearly the perfect premise—I just can’t get over how genius it is to have an autistic protagonist who’s had to study human behavior her whole life study alien behavior as well in order to initiate First Contact. I ended up buying it for Bookshop.org’s recent Anti-Prime Sale, and I ate it up in a handful of days. Though not without its flaws, Failure to Communicate delivers almost completely on its remarkable premise, full of political intrigue, aliens, and heart.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Failure to Communicate (Xandri Corelel, #1) – Kaia Sønderby

Xandri Corelel has spent her life studying everyone around her, be they people or aliens. She’s been forced to, after centuries of eugenics has made her one of the few autistic humans left in the universe. She uses these skills as a Xeno-Liaison, negotiating with all sorts of aliens on behalf of the Starsystems Alliance. But when presented with a potentially hostile species possessing one of the most powerful weapons in the universe, Xandri faces the most difficult negotiation of her career—one that may chance the face of interspecies relations forever.

TW/CW: ableism, xenophobia (fictional), violence, blood, genocide themes, slavery, animal death

“Autistic person spends entire life trying to understand human behavior, doesn’t fully understand it, then spends her entire career understanding alien behavior instead” has to win the gold medal for the best sci-fi premise I’ve heard in years. (Also, felt.) And though not all of it delivered on said premise, Failure to Communicate is a hidden gem for sure.

Now, I’m reviewing a space opera book which features a whole host of alien species, which means it’s time for my obligatory creature design rant. The aliens in Failure to Communicate are…a complicated case, for sure. The majority of them are basically larger, intelligent versions of real-world animals (with some brief exceptions), but Sønderby is self-aware of the fact; for instance, the Psittacans (a name that Xandri gave the species and didn’t develop on its own, thankfully) basically look like giant parrots, but Xandri explains that in-universe, all of their parrot-like features aren’t anything like what we would call, say, feathers, but evolved in such a way that they looked exactly like Earth parrots independently of Earth. This same explanation is given to pretty much all of the other species in the book, which is a bit too convenient to apply to 90% of the aliens in the novel. As for the Anmerilli, though I’m not disparaging the cover artist in any way, I feel like the cover didn’t do justice to their more alien features—and man, was I relieved that these aliens weren’t just humans with extra steps. Well…if you boiled it down, they kind of were, but there were enough traits that they at least got to the level of a decently compelling Star Wars humanoid. (Also, Sønderby’s descriptions of the Zechak also made me picture them as genocidal Piglins, which was…uh, interesting, for sure.)

But what almost made up with that for me was the in-depth explanations of their respective cultures. In the end, Failure to Communicate wasn’t necessarily a book about biology—it was a book about politics, anthropology, culture, and communication. That, at least, was incredibly fleshed out and much more thoroughly thought-out—as it should’ve been. Dissecting some of the alien cultures was one of the best parts of the novel. These cultures and the conflicts between them formed the backbone of the novel. Though until the end, Failure to Communicate is somewhat light on action, Xandri’s experiences with navigating the intricacies of dozens of alien cultures was nothing short of compelling—Sønderby has the mind of an anthropologist, and there was truly no stone left unturned. I loved that she didn’t shy away from depicting the discomfort that comes with interacting with other cultures for the first time and having one’s own values brush up against theirs—it’s bound to happen with First Contact, and it’s bound to happen in a lot of novel, multicultural interactions. There were some places where I felt there needed to be more nuance (ex. the whole situation with the Zechak; yes, they’re genocidal, but it verged too close to “this entire species consists of genocidal, cold-blooded killers,” which Xandri tries to self-correct, but isn’t emphasized enough. I’d find that hard to believe), but overall, I loved Sønderby’s cultural explorations.

Sønderby’s commitment to not shying away from discomfort was one of the best parts of the novel, and that was made manifest in her main character, Xandri. There was a ton about her that I loved—her keen eye for cultural quirks, her inner monologues about the idiosyncrasies of the neurodivergent world, and her unflappable sense of justice. However, she was far from a perfect character—even being in a world populated with aliens, she harbored her own unconscious biases and prejudices, which she frequently had to come to terms with throughout her mission. She lashed out, she made rash decisions—she was imperfect. And though she was easy to root for, she had plenty of flaws, a balance that is difficult for any author to strike.

Failure to Communicate isn’t an action-heavy book, which I’m all for—waiter! More cozy sci-fi, please! However, I hesitate to call this novel “cozy,” especially considering the moment when shit hits the fan during the last third of it. Everything that happens then swiftly merits the “cozy” title being unceremoniously ripped off. Nonetheless, Sønderby takes some cues from cozy sci-fi’s best; I loved how she let the plot meander in the more interpersonal conflicts as opposed to the big and showy ones, and let the often messy character dynamics take the lead. The ending was also messy and bittersweet, but not in a way that lacks resolution—it is a resolution, just a very complicated one with quite a lot of uncomfortable implications for Xandri. Another example of Sønderby not shying away from making things complex. I do like that it ended on a very hopeful note, as much of a wreck as some things ended up being.

Being neurodivergent, the subject of disability was part of what drew me into Failure to Communicate. I’ve mentioned on here that I have SPD, which shares some similarities with autism, and I related to Xandri’s lifelong mission to study and understand the neurotypical people around her in order to try and piece together how their world worked. She deals with a hefty dose of ableism (both from well-intentioned and malicious people) throughout the book, which was quite rough, but I loved that she never compromised her pride in being autistic. Sønderby takes the trope of futuristic societies erasing disability as a sign of progress to task, which amplifies Xandri’s struggles as an autistic woman into the struggles of possibly being the only autistic person in the entire galaxy. Which…yeah. The ableism is inevitable at that point. The only disability aspect that I’m not so sure about was having the twist that Marco was also disabled (specifically, he has bipolar disorder); I do appreciate that Sønderby uses it as an opportunity to show that almost identical conditions can produce a hero as well as a villain and that the pressures of ableism drove him to betray the team, but I really don’t think the latter had enough nuance to it. Not that disabled characters can’t be evil, obviously, but it felt too much like making a mentally ill character automatically a villain simply because they’re mentally ill. I’m willing to give Sønderby the benefit of the doubt because she handled all of the other disability-related topics so wonderfully, but it still didn’t sit completely right with me.

Also, I just have to mention that this book is so, so queer. BLESS. First off, I loved that Xandri was bisexual, but I appreciated that she was polyamorous too—there’s hardly any depictions of polyamory out there that don’t make their characters the butt of a joke or a fetish, so this was a breath of fresh air, for sure.

All in all, a wholly unique space opera about communication, culture, and collision. 4 stars!

Failure to Communicate is the first novel in the Xandri Corelel series, followed by Tone of Voice and preceded by Testing Pandora, a prequel novella. Kaia Sønderby is also the author of the YA fantasy novel Damsel to the Rescue.

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 (10/7/25) – The Volcano Daughters

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Continuing with Latine Heritage Month, here’s a novel that came on my radar last year when it was released. Literary fiction isn’t my go-to, but I do love some magical realism sprinkled in, so I was interested. What resulted was something deeply impacting. The Volcano Daughters pulls no punches, and yet cares so deeply for its protagonists—and for everyone whose voice is silenced.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Volcano Daughters – Gina María Balibrera

Graciela grew up in El Salvador, among their family of Indigenous women. But when the cronies of a rising dictator steal her away to be his oracle, she’s torn away from everything she knows and loves. In the dictator’s palace, she meets Consuelo, her stolen sister who is also indentured in the palace, made to sit by as the government dabbles in faulty magic and formulates a plan to commit genocide on her Indigenous community. Now young women, Consuelo and Graciela free for their lives, both thinking the other dead.

Darting between America and France, Consuelo and Graciela fight to forge new lives for themselves. But can they ever leave the past behind—or each other?

TW/CW: rape, genocide, colonialism/imperialism themes, racism, misogyny, miscarriage, violence, murder, deportation/kidnapping

My main gripe with literary fiction at large is that it’s a breeding ground for novels that are unrealistically miserable in the thought that misery and depression automatically make it “deep.” I’ve read enough of said books and been in fiction workshops long enough that just the thought of sadness being equated to depth makes me want to throw up in my mouth. Is The Volcano Daughters a sad, literary novel? Yes. And yet the sadness is there to tell a powerful story, not just to sell. It’s the story of silenced women, but also a story of resilience and sisterhood and so much more. It’s what literary fiction should be.

After this novel, I’m sure I’ll read more from Gina María Balibrera, but…god, in the right headspace, for sure. The Volcano Daughters is a heavy novel, and for good reason. I didn’t put these trigger warnings there lightly. But Balibrera’s prose is seriously something to behold. Just as Consuelo and Graciela view the world through the lens of artists, so too does Balibrera. Every detail is truly luscious; the many places that The Volcano Daughters travels through are realized in such vivid detail that I swear I could almost smell the air. No stone is unturned, and no metaphor is treated lightly—Balibrera puts even the most minor details under a microscope and crafts them into the most lush language, almost bordering on poetry in the more metaphorical moments.

There’s something so special about the way that Balibrera treats Consuelo and Graciela as characters. I hesitate to call them fully tragic characters, but their lives are largely dictated by one tragedy after another. Yet no matter what happened to them, I always sensed that Balibrera would have something waiting for them at the end. It wasn’t an ending that was tied up with a nice bow, but it was a speckle of hope on the horizon. They were still suffering, but their justice was just out of reach, but still visible. Had she gone too far in one direction, it would’ve felt like needless plot armor, especially in the climate(s) that Consuelo and Graciela lived in; too far in the other, and it would’ve strayed into trauma porn territory. Balibrera treats her characters in the most realistic and yet the most caring way; though they have endured so much and have so much more to endure, she makes you cling to that sliver of hope, gives you glimpses of incremental lives that they might live in a few years’ time, because it is all that is left. As somber of a book as this is, I did appreciate that there was a very tangible inkling of better days to come.

What seems to hook most readers about The Volcano Daughters is the ghosts, which…yeah, that’s what hooked me too. But it’s one of the most original and compelling aspects of this book; in between the present narrative, the story has frequently interjections from four ghosts: Consuelo and Graciela’s other sisters who were murdered during the genocide. Like the other characters in this novel, they’re so vibrant and full of sass and wisdom in equal measure. Their role is often to come in and drag the reader back to the embarrassing reality when somebody’s inner monologue gets too self-absorbed or when someone’s telling the story wrong. (Nobody can quite agree what’s really right, and that’s what makes them so funny.) At times, the humor didn’t quite land (I found it hard to believe that a ghost who got killed in the ’30s would use “Boom!” as an exclamation like it’s the 2010’s), but they all had such distinct voices that I could almost let it slide. Yet they are also there to be incorporeal forces of justice, metaphysical representations of the voiceless, the forgotten of history who have been brushed aside. They are the deliverers of the justice they never got, and they form the emotional backbone of The Volcano Daughters.

The part that the ghosts emphasize for me is how Balibrera examines the theme of storytelling and whose stories are told—and the power structures that ensure that some stories are either untold or told incorrectly. Names are deeply important: every murdered Indigenous woman is given a specific name, whereas the dictator of El Salvador is only referred to as “El Gran Pendejo”; similarly, El Gran Pendejo’s entire regime operates on stories, ones that are told to reinforce a racist narrative. Graciela acts out stories about marginalized people in order to further the United States’ racist stereotypes of various groups. And yet here are the ghosts, who take the story into their own hands to deliver the complicated, messy, yet real narrative. The ghosts are there to be the voice of every marginalized person who has ever been deliberately erased from history, every marginalized person who has had to bear the pain of having their history warped and their country slandered. Both the ghosts and the central sisters are stars of the novel because they are precisely the kind of people that history forgets. The Volcano Daughters tells us that history surrounds us—and that there will always be someone to tell the truth.

Overall, a deeply moving and emotional novel of sisterhood and distance that serves as a righteous megaphone for those who have had their voices stolen. 4 stars!

The Volcano Daughters is a standalone and Gina María Balibrera’s debut novel.

Today’s song:

I loved her episode of What’s In My Bag? and I love this song!!

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (7/29/25) – Redsight

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

As Disability Pride Month comes to a close, here’s one last book to finish off the month. This one has been on my TBR for at least a year, and it’s evaded me in the library thus far—thankfully, Barnes & Noble finally brought my chase to an end. Even though I’m growing a little weary of every new sci-fi that hinges on the promise of “incomprehensible space religion, woooooo,” Redsight provided a fascinating twist in the subgenre.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Redsight – Meredith Mooring

Korinna knows that she is doomed to a life of obscurity. Even though her being a Redseer gives her the power to manipulate space-time itself, she is the weakest of her order, and little mercy is shown to the weak. Resigning herself to a position navigating a warship for the treacherous Imperium, Korinna is at war with herself. But when the warship is boarded by strange pirates, Korinna learns that she has power beyond comprehension—all deliberately hidden. With her newfound abilities and a desire to uncover the secrets of the Goddesses that once ruled the galaxy, Korinna searches for answers, but what she finds may be more dangerous than she could have ever bargained for.

TW/CW: violence, gore, blood, death of children (off-page)

In the last six or seven years, I’ve seen a major trend in science fiction where the plot centers around an ancient, ominous Space Religion™️ (see: Gideon the Ninth, The First Sister, The Genesis of Misery). It’s a Thing. The usual suspects include an AI/vague cosmic entity deity, some form of cult, vague to overt references to Catholicism, and repression. I’m honestly fine with all of these things—in fact, having a cultish religion on an intergalactic scale is often a fascinating way to set up a story, and can be used to many ends, whether it’s deepening worldbuilding or critiquing organized religion in the real world, as it often does. My problem was that it’s everywhere. I feel like every other space opera I find is some kind of retelling of Joan of Arc or “what if God was real and it was a robot and the robot wanted to kill you?” Again, interesting once or twice, but after a point, they all start to blend together. On a personal level, I guess it’s partly because I don’t often connect as deeply to stories about religion/religious trauma, but I swear every other adult sci-fi book out there is like this.

Redsight is one of those books. However, it had enough different aspects that it was separated from the rest for me. It honestly veers into space fantasy at times, toeing the line between that and space opera expertly. Even though the redseers and all of the other witches in the universe had a slightly similar structure to some other books I’d read (spooky magic, incomprehensible goddesses trapped in tombs for thousands of years, etc.), it was Mooring’s exploration of how this insular cult of witches affected the outside world that stood out to me. The space-time manipulation is awesome, first off, but there’s also a host of space pirates, sprawling libraries, and transformative magic that goes…wrong. Snakes are involved. Also, Korinna and the others don’t exist in a vacuum—they’re a small part of a massive galaxy and are entangled in all manner of messy, manipulative politics throughout the universe. (There’s a strong Bene Gesserit vibe going on…I guess Dune might be to blame for the big spooky space religion trend?) They are outwardly very strange to others, and they don’t feel self-contained, as some other similar books are—they felt like a small part of a much more expansive world, which is what set it apart. Plus, I loved how it served as a critique of both that can come from organized religion AND the corruption that spreads into imperial politics—it’s all a great examination of systemic corruption, which I enjoyed thoroughly.

One of the more unique aspects of Redsight was how disability was handled. Up until we leave the Navitas, where all of the redseers are trained, pretty much all of the characters you meet are blind. All of the priests and priestesses of Vermicula are blind, and the way that Mooring shows us how it’s accommodated in the universe is fascinating. Through the power of redsight, they can sense most everything they need to sense through…well, manipulating the fabric of time and space, which is pretty badass in and of itself. But beyond that, I love how many intricacies to Korinna’s life are detailed. We see how she senses space around her with her blindness, how the Order of Vermicula produces special tactile books so that everyone can read the holy texts, and how she navigates the universe without being accommodated like she was within the Order. Knowing that Mooring herself is blind, I’m sure that she thought of everything when it came to how Korinna would navigate the universe, accommodations or not, and it showed through in her writing.

If you’re looking for a twisty book, then Redsight is the book for you! Even though I feel like I’m iffy when it comes to predicting twists, the ones in this novel had me constantly guessing. Mooring nails a critical combination of a very slow-burn first third of the novel, gradually building tension, while also throwing out a red herring where you think you know what the big mid-book reveal is, but…oh boy, I did not. (Red herrings, Redsight, red witches…lots of red in this book! Say, what’s that pooling on the floor?) In all seriousness, Mooring did an excellent job of creating tension and putting up all manner of red flags and misleading clues, and they came up organically: they were both the result of Korinna not knowing any better and the propaganda and narrative control that both the Order of Vermicula and the Imperium had over the knowledge that was passed onto her. It deepened the worldbuilding and the pacing of Redsight…for the most part.

All that being said, the ending was quite rushed. With as much buildup as this novel had, it was kind of bound to happen. All things considered, Redsight is Mooring’s debut novel, so I can let some of it go, because I enjoyed the majority of it. But there was just far too much crammed into the last 100 or so pages of the novel. Even with the theme of undoing systemic corruption, the speed at which it happened was truly just bonkers. For the truly mind-boggling, cosmic scale that everything in Redsight happened in, it seemed illogical that everything that happened in the novel would’ve been able to happen so quickly. After all of that, it was wrapped up strangely tightly—the loose ends were tied up basically because…the Goddesses can just do whatever, and it’s fine. I guess if you’re dealing with universe-creating Goddesses, by that logic, they can also clean up messy endings? It felt cheap. For the amount of time spent just on the buildup in the first third of the novel, everything was resolved far too quickly than seemed plausible, even with my suspension of disbelief.

All in all, a gripping and captivating—if a little messy—story of corruption and history, all set within the bounds of a boundless, magic-filled universe. 4 stars!

Redsight is a standalone, and Meredith Mooring’s debut novel.

Today’s song:

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (7/22/25) – The Ephemera Collector

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Continuing with Disability Pride Month, here’s a fascinating 2025 debut! I love books about libraries and archives, both for personal reasons and because of the possibilities that they hold. Add in the queer, science fiction aspect of it, and I was instantly hooked. The Ephemera Collector turned out to be one of the more unique books I’ve read recently, both in its mixed-media approach and the sprawling nature of its vision.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Ephemera Collector – Stacy Nathaniel Jackson

2035. In a divided, polluted Los Angeles, Xandria Brown pours her passion into her work as an archivist. Collecting ephemera from prominent Black authors, artists, and activists, she fights to preserve her work as the threat of corporate encroachment in her library looms. After the death of her wife, only her health bots, which monitor her symptoms of long COVID, keep her company. But when the library goes into lockdown for undisclosed reasons, Xandria and her health bots must get to the bottom of the mystery—and make sure that her collections are unscathed.

TW/CW: ableism, eugenics, racism, violence, medical content

Though not without its flaws, this is one of those novels where you can really feel how much of a labor of love it was for the author. The Ephemera Collector is Stacy Nathaniel Jackson’s debut novel, which he published in his 60’s (!!!). It’s a mix of prose, poetry, and visual media, and I honestly wish I’d read a physical copy instead of an ebook in this case, because I feel like my Kindle couldn’t grasp the formatting fully. Nevertheless, The Ephemera Collector is a unique novel in all senses: a unique dystopia, a unique Afrofuturist novel, and a startlingly original piece of sci-fi.

Stacy Nathaniel Jackson’s vision of the United States 10 years from now was certainly bleak, but his worldbuilding was what made The Ephemera Collector stand out so much to me. No stone was left unturned in terms of what happens to America in the next 10 years, from the threat of corporate oversight on Xandria’s archives of Black history to the COVID-34 pandemic that occurs a year before the novel is set. It was bleak to me, but not necessarily cynical to me; yeah, us going into a second global pandemic only 14 years after “getting through” the first one seems a bit cynical, but given how this country absolutely bungled how we handled COVID-19, it feels somewhat realistic. Yet the weirder and further you get from the center of what makes Jackson’s dystopia a dystopia, the more imaginative the worldbuilding gets. Xandria is followed around by health bots that all have distinct personalities. There’s a whole Atlantis 2: Electric Boogaloo situation with a group of POC separatists who settle underwater off the coast of California. The weirder Jackson gets with it, the better the worldbuilding becomes; those unique touches are what stuck with me the most.

Yet even though Jackson’s vision of the future is full of polluted air and government corruption (not too far off…oof), it never fully felt like completely gloom and doom. In the end, I feel like this novel was about the importance of preserving history, and the main character’s fight is to keep corporations out of her exhibition of Black history, namely a collection of ephemera about Octavia Butler. Our protagonist is a queer, disabled Black woman who comes from a line of disabled Black ancestors, and she is standing her ground when it comes to preserving their history as a fundamental thread in the fabric of our country. Xandria putting up this fight, for me, was what kept The Ephemera Collector from being fully cynical. To imagine a darker vision of the future is one thing, but to have a character fight it, win, and outlast said corruption and hatred (somehow, she lives to be 300 years old? I assumed it was the gene editing, but it’s never fully explained) was what gave me hope in the end. Xandria, a battered woman who faced threats to her archives, non-consensual gene editing and eugenicist practices, and the death of her wife, comes out the victor in the end, triumphant over everything she fought to defeat. She is alive to preserve the history of her ancestors, but she is also proof that even the groups that America is most determined to erase will survive no matter what this country throws at them—and outlive them by centuries.

Going into The Ephemera Collector, I knew it wouldn’t be the easiest book to digest. The reviews warned me of a novel that frequently went on tangents that didn’t relate to the main storyline, and a novel that was disorganized in general. Having that in mind, I went in with low expectations. While I do think this novel was a bit disorganized at worst, I think it was partially the point. This is a book about an archivist poring through artifacts in a massive library. Jackson’s style is very stream-of-consciousness, and I feel like it uniquely reflects what Xandria’s mindset would accurately be if she spent most of her waking hours as an archivist. It reminded me vaguely of The Library of Broken Worlds, a very different book from this one, but still a sprawling, magnificent at best, deeply convoluted at worst novel set in a vast library. Maybe that’s just what you’re in for if you write imaginative books about sci-fi/fantasy libraries. There were some sections that strayed too far from the main plot for my taste (more on that later), but overall, I enjoyed the breaks in form, whether it was the switches from prose to poetry to the anecdotes about Xandria’s ancestry. It really put me in mind of an archivist, and that seems exactly what Jackson set out to do. For me, it also tied back into the theme of preserving history—all of what we see is the history that Xandria fought so hard to keep alive and non-sanitized by corporations.

Here’s the thing, though. I was fine with the earlier tangents because I could see the thread that connected them to the rest of the novel. But around 60% of the way through, The Ephemera Collector quite literally loses the plot. Without warning, it switches to an entirely new story that’s barely connected to the main story—and that’s being generous. The only possible connection I could find was that one of the characters was a relative of Xandria, but that’s it. There’s no connection to her or the library. My dilemma is that although it was very distant from the rest of the novel, it was still a compellingly written storyline. It dealt with one of the more fascinating parts of the worldbuilding: the separatist community who created an underwater settlement, and later became pseudo-climate refugees when it became untenable to live underwater for any longer. It was so strange and lovely to pick apart, but it didn’t connect to the main narrative until the very last minute. Even in the context of Xandria looking through the archives, there wasn’t a clear thread. I’m tempted to give this less than 4 stars, because although this frustrated me, the writing was just that good. In my more arbitrary system, I guess it would be more in the 3.8-3.9 range, if we’re getting really specific, but I like it more than a 3.75. It’s a weird dilemma, but so is the whole novel, really.

All in all, a deeply imaginative Afrofuturist novel that pushed the boundaries of what a dystopia can be. 4 stars!

The Ephemera Collector is a standalone and Stacy Nathaniel Jackson’s debut.

Today’s song:

NEW GUERILLA TOSS, WOOOO

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