Tag: AAPI

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 (8/6/24) – The Stardust Grail

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

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

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Stardust Grail – Yume Kitasei

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today’s song:

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (5/28/24) – The Traveling Cat Chronicles

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I’ve been trying to find and read more translated books, but in my hunt, I’d completely forgotten that I’d put The Traveling Cat Chronicles on my TBR over four years ago. Any story about a cat is right up my alley (yes, I was a Warriors kid back in the day, why do you ask?), but now that I’ve read this one, I’ve concluded that it’s an essential read for all cat lovers—and anyone who’s ever experienced the unbreakable bond of having a special pet.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Travelling Cat Chronicles – Hiro Arikawa, translated by Philip Gabriel

Ever since Satoru rescued a stray cat, from the brink of death, they have been inseparable from day one as cat and owner. Nana, named for his crooked tail that looks like the number seven, loves to spend time with Satoru. But due to circumstances that Nana has yet to comprehend, Satoru can no longer take care of his beloved cat. In an attempt to find an adequate home for Nana, human and cat go on a roadtrip in a van across Japan, visiting childhood friends in order to find a suitable candidate. On this trip of a lifetime, Nana will discover things beyond his comprehension—and a love for his owner that will only grow deeper.

TW/CW: illness, animal injury, loss of loved ones (past)

Goodness…this was the sweetest book I’ve read in a long time. It’s essential reading for anybody who’s ever owned and loved a cat, but also for anyone who has ever felt the sacred connection of a good pet. It’s full of laughs, but tugs at the heartstrings in a perfect balance—it’s a wholly human book, but a wholly feline one as well.

Having a good cat voice in a novel aimed mainly at adults is not an easy task. Especially since this book was first published in 2012, it would have been far too easy to go down the “I can haz cheezburger, hooman?” route and just derail the emotional core of the narrative. But Nana’s voice was hysterical, and not in a forced way at all. It’s clearly the voice of a cat from a longtime cat owner; Nana is very particular about everything, doesn’t like change, doesn’t like being petted the wrong way, and is very picky about his food. When Satoru makes an assumption about his habits, he openly derails the flow of the story just so he can clear the air and admit that no, he does not, in fact, like those mouse toys. What made it so funny was how believable it is—no matter the temperament of the cats you may have owned, you’ve 100% owned a cat like Nana. I found myself thinking of my sweet girl Hobbes, who has a similarly no-nonsense attitude about where and when she’s petted and likes to go after small birds but doesn’t kill them, leaving them to fly around the house and shed feathers everywhere She’s an angel, obviously.

Even though parts of the narrative switch to the perspectives of the human characters, Nana’s perspective was what made the heart of The Traveling Cat Chronicles. Throughout their trip through Japan, I loved seeing all of these new sights through Nana’s feline eyes, whether it was seeing the ocean (very bad) and Mt. Fuji (very good) for the first time or meeting Satoru’s many childhood friends. Perceiving all of this novelty through the narration of a cat wasn’t necessarily new to me, given my reading habits from ages 7-12, but for an adult novel, I loved seeing this perspective with more maturity, but the same amount of humor. Hearing Nana describe things as simple as the music coming from Satoru’s car radio (how does this cat come up with such eloquent metaphors?) to the chatter of the dogs on the boat towards the end of the novel in ways that felt so new, but wholly feline—and for that, I have to give so much praise to Hiro Arikawa; some of it was humorous, but some of these observations felt heartwarming in that they felt real, just the passing thoughts of a smaller animal in a big, big world.

However, Nana’s voice isn’t the entire novel—The Traveling Cat Chronicles also sees the backstories of not just its main character, Satoru, but of the childhood friends and family members that he visits. Nana was the star of the show, but some of these flashback sequences served to deepen the emotional core of the novel, especially in the case of Satoru; from his troubled childhood to his adolescence, we see Satoru’s life through other people’s eyes. Even beyond Nana’s narration, we only ever get glimpses Satoru, one of the novel’s two protagonists, entirely through lenses other than his own. Another strength was that these flashbacks were spaced apart perfectly: frequently enough that we could get fragments of Satoru’s backstory and understand it in concert with the current timeline, but far enough apart that they didn’t strangle the story. And each flashback was emotional in its own right, no matter how momentous or insignificant each vignette was. Each one felt authentic in its focus—in our minds, something as fleeting as sneaking off on a field trip weighs as much as a death in the family, and that was exactly how Arikawa told these stories.

I’ll refrain from spoiling the ending (although you can easily predict it from a few hints scattered throughout the novel), but it doesn’t make it any less heartbreaking—and beautiful. The cat’s-eye view on the events unfolding before Nana make them all the more harrowing, simply because you can’t quite explain these things to a cat, even if they understand in the abstract that something’s wrong. For cats, we are seemingly immortal monoliths until we aren’t—and it’s confusing for a creature that can understand our language, but just barely misses what makes us what we are. But beyond that, it reminds us of the inseparable connections between us and our pets. Our lives are short, but the lives of our cats, dogs, and other animals are even shorter; yet still, the mark that they leave on our lives, just like our friends, is a mark that cannot be replicated or replaced.

As I read the end of The Traveling Cat Chronicles, I was reminded of my Anakin, who passed about two months ago. He’d been in my life since I was a little kid, and by the time he peacefully passed at the ripe old age of 17, I was almost finished with my sophomore year of college. There will never be another cat quite like him, in all of his crusty, screamy, and truly lovable glory. His absence has been harder for me to take than some of my other childhood pets that have passed; when his lifelong companion Padmé died, I grieved heavily, but I had Anakin there to console me. When I came back home for the first time after he passed, I expected to see him in the guest room. Two months later, and I still peer over at the sofa, expecting him to be curled up between the cushions, fitfully sleeping in a pile of his own shedded fur. But that is the mark that he’s left on my life—impermanent, but unlike any other creature. Just as we must look to the small pleasures of life, we, like Satoru and Nana, must appreciate the impact of the smallest lifetimes on our hearts.

All in all, a cat-lover’s dream book which balances humor and heart in equal measure. 5 stars!

The Traveling Cat Chronicles is not part of a series, but Hiro Arikawa has also written a companion book of short stories, The Goodbye Cat. She is also the author of several other novels that have been translated into multiple languages.

Today’s song:

yeah this has a chokehold on me yet again 🕺

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 (5/14/24) – Dear Wendy

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Hooooooooooooo-whee…rant incoming…they’re good for the soul. Sometimes. I hate to do this so soon after I posted this year’s AAPI Heritage Month recommendations, but I just had to get this review off my chest. I highly recommend all of those books over this one.

God. I really wanted to like this one. Older YA where the characters are in college are few and far-between, and what’s even fewer and further-between is aromantic/asexual representation, much less POC aro-ace representation. I almost DNF’d this one, but I really wanted to stick it out and see if it turned out any better…and tragically, it didn’t. I hate to say it, but Dear Wendy was one of the most stiffly-written books I’ve read in quite a while.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Dear Wendy – Ann Zhao

Sophie Chi and Jo Ephron are both second-semester freshmen at Wellesley College, and they don’t know that they know each other. Sophie runs Dear Wendy, an Instagram account that gives love advice to Wellesley’s student body, and Jo runs Dear Wanda, a much more unhinged parody of the former with joke advice to contrast Wendy’s more serious online persona. The two meet in real life and immediately hit it off—they’re both aroace, and have never met many people, even in the queer community, who have experienced the same things as them. But as their online feud as Wendy and Wanda gets heated, Sophie and Jo must decide if they want to divulge their mutual secret—and risk their real friendship.

TW/CW: aphobia, anxiety, bullying, discussions of coming out/non-accepting parents (brief)

Ooof. Even from an outside perspective (as a non-ace person, but still queer), there’s a noticeable dearth of asexual-/aromantic- spectrum stories, even in YA, which is usually several steps ahead of the game as far as being progressive. So in concept, I’m glad that Dear Wendy exists, and I’m sure it will help a ton of a-spec people find their voices and feel seen. But good lord, this was easily one of the most poorly-written novels I’ve read all year. I’m genuinely baffled that I read the same book as all of the other people who left such glowing reviews. Baffled. Again, speaking from an outside perspective, but I think the a-spec community deserves better than this…

I usually preface my negative reviews with this, but I’ll say it again, because it always applies: I’m willing to give a certain amount of slack to Ann Zhao since Dear Wendy is her debut novel. It’s so hard to put pen to paper, and harder still to get it published, and that in and of itself is an intense labor of love. And I’m so glad that this book exists for some people for its discussions of AAPI, aroace, and gender non-conforming identity. I’m sure it’ll be a book that will mean a great deal to a great deal of people.

But. But.

All that doesn’t fully excuse how painfully stiff Zhao’s writing was. Dear Wendy would have been a DNF for me had I not stubbornly tried to stick it out, just because I was convinced that the rest of the book wouldn’t be a disappointment. I wanted to give it a chance, with the combination of the premise and the fact that it’s Zhao’s debut. I had faith that it would get better, but it never did. For a novel that purported itself to be charming and emotional, the writing felt more like a textbook or a brochure than fiction—never once did any of the characters feel like real people talking. The novel was full of writing choices that just felt downright odd; at some point, we hear one of the main characters eavesdropping on two other characters (about the Social Media Drama™️), and after each of these side characters speak, we get their first and last names—and then never hear from them again. Characters list out song titles like they’re being read aloud by Siri, and all of the attempts at humor are just the characters doing word-for-word reenactments of jokes from Tumblr and TikTok without any attempts to hide the evidence. And for two characters that are supposed to have opposing personalities, their voices blended together in an indistinguishable, bland mess—the only way we can “tell” is through the differences in their fabricated social media personalities. If I wanted to be hit over the head with something that unsubtly, I would’ve stood under the ice dispenser in the dining hall. But through it all, I was just struck by how none of the people acted like people—they acted like social media fabrications of queer people, and the world was similarly dictated through an artificial lens.

Dear Wendy is full of a myriad of relevant topics: aroace identity and acceptance, the suffocation of allosexual culture and the unrelenting pressure to find “the one,” and immigrant parents who don’t fully accept your queerness, to name a few. I’ll say again how glad I am that these subjects are being discussed in literature, because it’s true—we do need to talk about these things! But their delivery, more than not, zigzagged around one of the most time-worn rules of writing: show, don’t tell. Although this is realistic fiction, I feel like it falls into the same kind of mistakes that some sci-fi or fantasy novels make when they deliver information that is new to the reader: they deliver it in unpalatable blocks, making time all but stop in the narrative just so the author can explain The Important Thing™️. This was how most of the discussions felt in Dear Wendy; instead of a new worldbuilding point, it was just the character’s inner monologue, uninterrupted, for at least two pages at the longest. I get that it’s crucial to weave in these points, but there’s a way to do it without harming the flow of the story—once or twice is fine, when there’s a reason for the character to be so deep inside their head, but given that this story was supposed to center around Sophie and Jo’s relationship, there could have been so many more bonding scenes where they talked about this organically! That’s not to say that those scenes weren’t there, but since we were already stuck in inner monologue limbo 50 pages ago, none of the information was new, and therefore, none of the bonding felt like new ground.

In the author’s note, Ann Zhao calls this a love letter to Wellesley College, and that although her experience there wasn’t all good, she wanted to highlight the good in Dear Wendy. Remember what I said about the stiff writing? It applied to the surroundings, too. If her writing style contained…any sort of soul, then that mission statement would have come across. Instead, I felt like I was reading a college website for some parts of the novel. I got so far in to Zhao’s descriptions of the campus and the features of the dining hall that I had to blink and question whether or not she’d been paid to write all this by the college. Look—I’m sure Wellesley is a great place (historically women’s colleges are fantastic!) and I don’t want to negate the love that Zhao had for her time there, but there were so many places where the descriptions didn’t feel, again, like people experiencing their environment—it was just being dictated through a lens so devoid of personality that I felt like I was on a college tour, forced to hear a long-winded monologue about a bunch of landmarks that I’d never see again.

Usually, I’m in favor of a little pop culture referencing once in a while. I’ve never understood the argument that pop culture references in YA fiction take them out of the story. What, is fiction supposed to exist in some kind of culture-less vacuum? God forbid your characters engage with the same media as you do…god forbid you pay homage to the creators that inspired you to put pen to paper, apparently? If there’s anything that actually takes me out of the story, it’s the fake celebrities/artists/social media apps. (I get that a lot of that is dodging copyright, but the point still stands.) The argument has never made sense to me. Sure, dumping them all in a barrage is obviously a no-no, but there’s an art to a well-placed reference, and it’s an art that I appreciate. I have a completely arbitrary Goodreads shelf for books with good music references. (This one almost went on it just for an off-hand mention of Mitski.) But reading Dear Wendy made me understand where the anti-pop culture reference people are coming from. The whole book felt like a front to shove in as many references as humanly possible. Dear Wendy is over 360 pages—it wouldn’t have killed Zhao to cut out the chapter entirely consisting of Jo and Sophie talking about Harry Styles. The only places where the music references in particular felt relevant where when Jo was DJ-ing at the college station, and even then, when she was talking to Sophie about her upcoming song choices, it felt like they were being queued up and read aloud by Siri. Mind you, this wasn’t when Jo was actually DJ-ing—this was when she was talking to her friend. It only would have been worse if she’d said “Remastered version” in verbal parentheses.

And…god. If another book tries to smother me with this many Taylor Swift references, I’m going to chew my kindle in half. It’s already bad enough that even the dining hall TV was showing me news clips about whatever mediocre thing she’s doing…please, I thought literature was supposed to be an escape…

All in all, a platonic love story with all the ingredients for something meaningful and sweet that substituted personality and charm for stiffness and irrelevant references. 1.5 stars.

Dear Wendy is a standalone and Ann Zhao’s debut.

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 Books

The Bookish Mutant’s Books for AAPI Heritage Month (2024 Edition)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Monday, bibliophiles!

Here in the U.S., May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! This is my fourth year making this particular list, and I’ve found and read so many incredible books since then. As always, diverse reading shouldn’t be restricted to one month only, but here at The Bookish Mutant, I try to take any opportunity I can to shift the focus to marginalized voices—and to recommend fantastic books. It feels especially important to make these lists in the past few years, what with the book bans that are not-so-subtly targeting almost exclusively POC and queer voices—read between the lines. Freedom to read is freedom to resist.

As with last year’s list (see below), I’ve now expanded them to included both YA and Adult titles, organized by genre.

For my past lists, click below:

Let’s begin, shall we?

THE BOOKISH MUTANT’S BOOKS FOR AAPI HERITAGE MONTH (2024 EDITION)

FANTASY:

SCIENCE FICTION

REALISTIC AND HISTORICAL FICTION:

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and if so, did you enjoy them? What are your favorite books by AAPI authors? Let me know in the comments!

Today’s song:

NEW BEABADOOBEE????? I’m seated—

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (5/7/24) – Off With Their Heads

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles! I’ve returned from finals hell!

I’ve been a massive fan of Zoe Hana Mikuta ever since I fell in love with her Gearbreakers duology a few years back. Off With Her Heads is her most recent novel, having just come out in late April, and even though I would’ve read it no matter what genre it was in, the idea of her writing a novel loosely based on Alice in Wonderland intrigued me—and it did not disappoint.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Off With Their Heads – Zoe Hana Mikuta

Wonderland is full of monsters.

After a deadly plague ravaged the land, most of the remaining witches and magic-users have transformed into monstrous Saints: bloated, bloodthirsty beasts that scour the land looking for fresh meat. Carousel Rabbit and Iccadora Alice Sickle were brought up in a world of predators and plague, orphaned at a young age and eventually escaping their decrepit orphanage together, madly in love with each other. But their obsession tore them apart, and their paths diverged.

Now, Caro has become the Red Queen’s royal butcher, killing Saints and watching as the Queen stitches together Saints of her own through dark, flesh-binding magic. Alice has been on her own for years, slaughtering Saints to get by. With every Saint that she kills, she treads closer and closer to the Red Queen’s throne—and to Caro, who Alice will stop at nothing to bring down to size. But what she finds in the Red Queen’s palace may be even greater of a threat than the love that once tore her to shreds…

TW/CW: loss of loved ones (past), murder, graphic violence, body horror, disease, blood, gore

Dark fairytale (or fairytale-adjacent) books used to be everywhere on the YA landscape. It’s the kind of stuff I ate up from about ages 12 to 16, to various degrees of quality. What they had in common, however, were universally horrible covers. God. They’ve circled back around to being hilarious now, but you could just snag any book off of the YA fantasy shelf at Barnes & Noble, and it would have a cover with an airbrushed white girl with flowy hair and an equally flowy gown either spinning gracefully or fixing your stare with a photoshopped smolder. And the gown was usually melting into…I don’t know, feathers or blood or some shit. It was all very emo. Since then, this subgenre has slowly begun to die down in popularity (or maybe not? My tastes have probably just shifted). Whether or not Off With Their Heads is the slow beginning of that subgenre’s resurgence in YA remains to be seen, but either way, I’m glad that we’ve got much prettier covers for the next generation of budding YA readers. It’s what they deserve. (Give it up for Tran Nguyen’s gorgeous cover art!)

After the Gearbreakers duology, I figured that I would read just about anything that Zoe Hana Mikuta writes. Even if Godslayers was a bit of a lackluster series concluder, it was still a fun read. Even if it isn’t her best work, you’re going to have a good time reading it regardless. Gearbreakers got a fair bit grim, as dystopias are wont to do, but Off With Their Heads is the darkest that Mikuta has ever gone (so much so that it almost borders on new adult and not YA), and she writes it with a unique talent. Whether or not the urge was pent-up, this novel revels in the “dark” of the “dark fairytale retelling,” drenching Alice in Wonderland in bloodlust, obsession, and backstabbing. However, what a lot of the dark fairytales of yesteryear interpreted darkness as was just being edgy; most everything was for shock value and appealing to the “what if this fairytale was………BAD and EVIL” urge that ropes in all the 13-year-olds and it didn’t go far beyond that. But this genuinely feels like horror, and not being an edgelord for edginess’ sake. It’s gory, it’s grim, and it’s bloody, but more in the interest of horror than shock—these characters are surviving a truly horrific world, and it turns them into horrific people for understandable reasons. There’s a distinction to be made there, and Mikuta certainly recognized it. (Also, it’s worth noting that Off With Their Heads is unflinchingly queer, which, given that most of said older fairytale retellings only added in queerness when it was a side character that would inevitably die, is a vast improvement. The bar is low, but it’s noteworthy that it’s being exceeded nonetheless. Let’s go, lesbians!)

I’ve seen a lot of reviews call Caro and Alice “morally gray,” and…I have some thoughts. I almost see it. Almost. But if they were gray, it would be an incredibly dark gray, if anything. Maybe they were morally gray at the beginning, but by the time we get to the present timeline, they’ve both become such awful people that they’re nearly indistinguishable from the one evil person that they’re respectively allured by (Caro) and disgusted by (Alice)—the Red Queen. To paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi (hey, I missed my chance on May 4th), they’ve both become the very thing they swore to destroy. They’re both just despicable people, but their differences are written in such a way that their different breeds of horridness play off of each other fascinatingly; Caro’s become this world’s version of a class traitor and idolizes the pinnacle of evil, while Alice has become so consumed with revenge that she’ll justify just about anything. Add in the fact that the root of their personal vendettas lie in their past romantic relationship, and you’ve got a dynamic that was delicious to pick apart for all 400+ pages of the novel. Again, it all makes sense for the truly cutthroat circumstances they were brought up in—they’re products of their surroundings, in the worst possible way.

Even as someone who doesn’t engage with a ton of horror media in general, I know that the key to executing it is making the suspense feel real, especially if the threats in your world are entirely fictional and alien to the audience. Mikuta had a multitude of ways that kept the suspense palpable, and all of them hooked me over the course of the novel. I’m not sure why it is that the “There are [x] remaining Saints” count excited me so much at the beginning of each chapter, but it was a failsafe way to keep track of both the danger and the kill count of the various characters—the tangible effects of the butchering they’re described as doing. Having those numbers up front also provided a sense of scale; in the present timeline, the Saints numbered in the thousands, giving an idea of just how dangerous being in Wonderland truly is—you can’t go for a walk in the woods without encountering a bloated, bloodthirsty, and quite possibly engineered monstrosity on the prowl for flesh. It’s a constant danger—and Mikuta make it feel much more dangerous just by having a chapter subheading.

However, what brought down some of my suspension of disbelief was the worldbuilding. Clearly, there was attention to detail, but only in the ways that Mikuta saw fit. There were tidbits here and there that I wished were expanded on—I loved the concept of the original Alice dreaming being this world’s creation myth, but we never got anything more out of that past the prologue. Outside of things like the Saints and the royal lineage, the worldbuilding was rather messy. I get that Off Their Heads is a very loose retelling at best—just using Alice and Wonderland and its characters as a jumping-off point for the setting—but there were so many convoluted and contradictory bits that I wasn’t completely invested. It’s mentioned that there’s a Jabberwocky court amongst the gentry of Wonderland who are described as humanoid, and yet the girls find a Jabberwocky in the woods described monstrously that has clear intention to kill them. Either that was a poorly-described Saint, or there’s some inconsistencies that need to be addressed. The reworking of Alice in Wonderland-related names into the characters were also a bit sloppy and corny; I get that there’s got to be some signal to the source material, but they were often so obvious, and barely related to the original character that they just made me cringe. I expected more from Mikuta on this front—slapping on character names just to remind the reader that, yes, this is a retelling, doesn’t seem like her style. I almost think it would have worked better if all of the Alice in Wonderland pretense was stripped away and made into a dystopian fantasy world.

Overall, an unflinchingly horrific retelling that displays Mikuta’s love and talent for suspense and obsessive sapphics—but her pitfalls in worldbuilding. 3.75 stars, rounded up to 4!

Off With Their Heads is a standalone, but Zoe Hana Mikuta is also the author of the Gearbreakers duology (Gearbreakers and Godslayers), and an untitled novel slated for release in 2025.

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 (4/9/24) – A Tempest of Tea

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I enjoyed Hafsah Faizal’s Sands of Arawiya duology when it came out, but when I heard that she was doing a fantasy heist novel with vampires and tea involved…yep. I’m in. No questions asked. And like her previous books, A Tempest of Tea was full of heart, humor, and more than a little blood.

Enjoy this week’s review!

A Tempest of Tea (Blood and Tea, #1) – Hafsah Faizal

Arthie Casimir runs a tight ship. By day, she runs a tearoom, but as soon as night falls, it’s a hub for vampires. It’s her only livelihood, and the one thing keeping her off the streets. But her secret is slowly spilling out—and the only way to keep it under wraps—and running in the first place—is to make a deal with some of the most dangerous vampires in the city. And infiltrating their inner circles isn’t a job for just one person. With a ragtag crew at her back, Arthie finally has an in—but will they be able to get out in one piece?

TW/CW: loss of loved ones (past), blood, gore, violence, themes of colonialism, racism, human trafficking/kidnapping (past), fire

Everybody, say it with me: every YA fantasy novel with an ensemble cast and a heist plot isn’t ripping off Six of Crows! Every YA fantasy novel with an ensemble cast and a heist plot isn’t ripping off Six of Crows!

Sure, the inspiration is there (it’s hard not to be inspired by Leigh Bardugo, after all), but like The Gilded Wolves or Into the Crooked Place, the similarities end with a fantasy heist plot with multiple POVs. (The same cannot be said for Among Thieves. BOOOOOO.) I already had high hopes that Hafsah Faizal had the skill to pull off a fantasy heist of her own, and she more than delivered—A Tempest of Tea was nothing short of a delight from start to finish.

Hafsah Faizal has a knack for creating lovable characters, the kind that easily bounce off one another and produce no shortage of genuinely clever banter. I’m glad to say that this quality carried over tenfold into A Tempest of Tea! Arthie was such a compelling protagonist to follow; her wit and determination made her the perfect mastermind for the Athereum heist, and her charm made every line of dialogue a treat. Her relationship with the equally charming Jin made for a pair with instant chemistry—they were similar enough that they meshed with each other excellently, but different enough to make them unique assets to the team that they were building. Flick, though the least developed of the three, was just as compelling—I find myself wanting so much more of her backstory! I imagine we’ll get more of that in book 2, but having that part of her somewhat hidden gave her so much more appeal, especially given that she was instrumental to the heist.

The setting was equally lovable in all of its lush descriptions! Already, it’s just pure fun to begin with—a historical, London-like setting with vampires embedded in the culture—what’s not to like? There’s really not a whole lot of magic, but just by introducing vampires and having them affect Arthie’s world in the ways that they did made A Tempest of Tea so much fun to pick apart. A lot of those shifts were evident in the changes Arthie made to her teahouse (and bloodhouse) when night fell—subtle hints like those made the world feel so much more real—and under a very palpable strain. The vampires themselves weren’t the most original take on vampires I’ve ever seen (not really much to distinguish them from any other vampire), but Faizal’s way of writing them is what made them stand out—they were often alluring, but in a way where the predatory side of them was transparent, but their influence of the characters was as well.

Part of why I was so excited for Faizal to do a heist novel was that her style seems like it was made for that all along. She has such a cinematic, action-packed writing style that made the Sands of Arawiya books such an adventure. It seems like more years of writing experience under her belt have benefitted her greatly—all that time honing her writing made A Tempest of Tea a finely crafted heist novel! All of the beats were there, and though they were familiar, Faizal’s writing practically jumps off the page, making the atmosphere seep through the ink and drag you right along with Arthie and her band of outcasts and criminals. There’s tons of well-choreographed action, but just the right amount that it didn’t overwhelm the narrative. Up until the ending (more on that later), the pacing was similarly excellent—the balance of character development/backstory, worldbuilding, and delicately constructing the plot made for a book that I had to force myself to not read in one sitting.

However, my only major issue—and the only thing keeping me from giving it the full four stars—is how the culmination of the heist was executed. We got all of the tension of sneaking into the Athereum and some of the confrontation, but the execution of it felt incredibly rushed. I could almost stretch my suspense of disbelief enough to side with Faizal and say that it was supposed to feel like a blur, but that’s reaching, even for me. There were far too many twists and turns crammed into a single scene, and for all of the somewhat quiet scenes that went on earlier in the novel, I could have used some more page space to spread all of these events out. It was discombobulating, but not in a way that felt stylistic or intentional in any way. It also dampened the emotional impact of the ending—we’d been going so fast that I barely registered that the book had actually ended when it did.

All in all, an action-packed heist fantasy that faltered in some execution at the end, but flourished in its cinematic writing and characters. 3.75 stars, rounded up to 4!

A Tempest of Tea is the first book in the Blood and Tea duology, with an untitled sequel tentatively slated for release in 2025. Hafsah Faizal is also the author of the Sands of Arawiya duology (We Hunt the Flame and We Free the Stars), and has contributed short stories to the anthologies Eternally Yours and The Grimoire of Grave Fates.

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 (3/19/24) – The Monstrous Misses Mai

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Technically, this review is an early review, but I didn’t get it as an ARC—I got it through the Amazon First Readers program. Usually, the books they offer aren’t my cup of tea, but The Monstrous Misses Mai seemed intriguing, and I never say no to free Kindle books. I love a good story about witches, and though it was predictable at times, The Monstrous Misses Mai was an entertaining addition to the wide subgenre!

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Monstrous Misses Mai – Van Hoang

Los Angeles, the early ’50s. Cordelia Mai Yin is down on her luck. Disowned by her parents and out of work, she’s been finding it difficult to find a place to stay. The apartment she eventually finds is cramped and occupied with three other roommates, but they have more in common than just their middle names. They all have unfulfilled dreams—and they all need a way to pay the rent. Callum, a mysterious friend of their landlord, knows it too. He offers them the deal of a lifetime, in exchange for a small sacrifice. Now, Cordi has a stable income and the job of her dreams, but the spells binding her reality are quickly beginning to fade, and the girls are running out of sacrifices to appease them…

TW/CW: body horror (mild), murder, loss of loved ones, manipulation

WARNING: this review contains some spoilers!

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Amazon First Reads program!

In the grand scheme of things, I don’t blame these characters—mostly Cordi—for turning to witchcraft to find a way to pay the rent. You gotta do what you gotta do in this economy. And in the economy of L.A. in the ’50s too, I guess.

The Monstrous Misses Mai was such an entertaining novel! I love a good book about witches, but I would say that it’s slightly different than your typical witch novel in that none of the main characters know what they’re doing with their magic. They’re all but sucked into a magical pyramid scheme that requires greater and greater sacrifices as it drains them little by little. Magic always comes at a cost: we all know that from the get-go, and this novel is no exception. But not knowing what exactly would happen to the women of the Mai residence was what kept the tension up for this novel for me. Although I wanted more out of the eventual climax (more on that later), it was a great narrative tactic to keep the reader guessing—not necessarily about where the plot would go, but about how things would go wrong for the characters.

Van Hoang has excellent prose, and it especially served this novel when it came to describing both L.A. in the ’50s. Her descriptions are so vivid and colorful—there wasn’t a single image in this novel that I couldn’t visualize in almost cinematic detail. The way that Hoang described both the cramped loft that the Mai women share and the glitz and glamor of the fashion world that Cordi finds herself entangled in made the world feel so much more tangible, and the divide between the double lives that the characters lived felt so much more fleshed out and tense as a result. Having such a stark contrast made the creeping feeling of dread for the characters even more palpable—with the magic that they were dabbling, the glamorous lives that they were leading would no doubt catch up to them.

The Monstrous Misses Mai focuses on four women (Cordi, Tessa, Silly, and Audrey), but we’re reading entirely from Cordi’s perspective. Cordi was a compelling enough character, and her struggles—both financial and magical—fueled the plot and pacing in a steady way. However, I wish I could say the same for the other characters. Tessa was next in terms of the most fleshed-out character, but for most of the novel, she only felt like Cordi’s confidante, and not the magical accomplice that she was supposed to be. Silly and Audrey were barely characterized at all—Silly was only seen in sparing glimpses, and what we got of Audrey was entirely one-dimensional; Audrey was the token no-nonsense, “guys, maybe it’s a bad idea to be messing around with forbidden magic” character, and all the resolution gave her was an “I told you so” [strikes pose with hand on hip] moment and no development whatsoever. I feel like this novel could have worked better as a multi-POV novel; if we got into the heads of all four of the Mai women, we could have gotten individual ideas for their specific stakes, risks, and transformations.

Remember what I said about not knowing about the magic? It worked for most of the novel, but when it came to the ending, I found myself wanting more. The resolution felt so predictable—they’re finally too many spells deep to reverse their magic, leaving them in a worse situation than they were before. For a little while, I almost thought it was going to resolve in some kind of tired “oh, women and their vanity hahaha, you know how chicks are” ending, but luckily, it’s 2024, so not to worry about that; I do appreciate that the blame was placed squarely on Callum for being the one who instigated a magical pyramid scheme and nearly stole their souls. However, I feel like there wasn’t a whole lot that was original about Hoang’s take on this kind of story. I expected there to be something strange about what the magic cost them or how their transformations occurred, but all we get is their (very mild) bodily deterioration and some lost fingernails/hair loss. Which, yeah, the fingernails were pretty gross, but I found myself wanting a kind of unique magical toll that it took—something otherworldly that would ultimately expose them. It wasn’t bad, per se, but it wasn’t the most memorable take on this kind of story.

All in all, a story of witchcraft and deception with memorable prose but not-so memorable twists. 3.5 stars!

The Monstrous Misses Mai is a standalone, and Van Hoang’s adult debut. Hang is also the author of the Girl Giant and the Monkey King series (Girl Giant and the Monkey King and Girl Giant and the Jade War) and the forthcoming middle grade novel Hidden Tails.

Today’s song:

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

Posted in ARC Reviews

ARC Review: Kindling – Traci Chee

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

And you may ask yourself…me? Doing ARC reviews again? Kind of. I did stop doing them in late high school because my schedule was getting too busy to stay on top of them, and now, I’m even busier than I was back then, so I doubt I’ll go back to Edelweiss. But I entered myself into a Goodreads giveaway for Kindling, and I was lucky enough to receive a physical ARC! I’m glad to say that Traci Chee’s latest fantasy novel doesn’t disappoint—innovative and heartbreaking in equal measure.

Enjoy this ARC review!

Kindling – Traci Chee

The war is over, but in the wreckage are kindlings. They are child soldiers, pawns imbued with unimaginable powers who fought and died on the front lines, all for a war effort they could not comprehend. Now, there is peace, but it is uneasy—the violence has not ceased, and those who were left stranded by the war have nowhere left to go. From the ashes, seven former kindlings have come out of the woodwork, ready to fight one last battle to ensure the safety of their country—and their futures.

I received this copy in a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you to HarperCollins publishing and Goodreads for this ARC!

TW/CW: graphic violence, child soldiers, blood, war themes, PTSD, loss of loved ones

Without a doubt, this is Traci Chee’s most experimental—and most tragic—book to date. It’s a book that manages to execute so many feats of acrobatics and lands every single one of them; in every way, Kindling is a success!

First off: the element that probably grabbed everyone straightaway. Not only does Kindling have seven POVs, all of them are written in second person. Both of those tricks are already a hefty load to take on, but to execute them both at the same time? That’s just madness. And yet Traci Chee pulls it off with flying colors. A lot of second-person fiction that I’ve read uses it as a way to draw the reader in, but after that, there’s nothing innovative about the story beyond a difficult POV to the story. But Chee utilizes it in such a unique way—it’s not just a clever trick, but a way to make us feel closer to these characters. You are the one witnessing these atrocities, war ravaging the land. You are the one watching your friends die. There’s an instant connection. And for the most part (with some exceptions), Chee manages to make all of the characters feel distinct while pulling off second person. Now that’s impressive.

I always love novels that explore the aftermath of war, or at least some kind of conflict; in a sea of both fantasy and sci-fi novels that have neat, happy endings in the wake of devastating wars, Chee really seems to understand the messiness of picking up the pieces after such a tragedy has ripped the world of Kindling apart. Everything happens after the war that changed the characters’ lives, and everything is still in chaos and turmoil. Aside from the “one last fight” trope, used as an homage to the inspirations for this novel (Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven), it gave a ripe opportunity to explore trauma—not just the inherent trauma that comes with being a child soldier, but the trauma of grappling with PTSD at a very young age, and the trauma of being deified by the war effort, in Amity’s case. Never at any point is Kindling an easy read—and that’s exactly the way it should be.

Kindling is squarely a found family novel, but Chee explores an aspect of it that is often overlooked—found families formed through trauma. Each of the characters, most of which are appropriately fleshed out, are given the individuality and arcs that they deserve, but all of them are informed by the war, and their status as ex-Kindlings is what binds them—and motivates them. They’re sticking together for survival, but the friendships that they form in the heart of hardship are what makes the core of this novel so emotional. There are so many tender moments shared between the characters, and they made the stakes of this novel so much more palpable—you felt, more than ever, that they really were children, and that they would never be the same after being used as pawns of war.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Tragically, Traci Chee also demonstrates in this novel the two most crushing ways of writing fictional deaths. Particularly with Emara and Amity, Chee is skilled at timing them just right to make the most impact on both the reader and the characters. Emara’s death was the most sudden, and it having it happen so quickly after building up that she might have been safe was a way to not just shake the characters, but up the stakes—if Emara wasn’t safe, then neither were the rest of them. Amity, on the other hand, was set up from the beginning to die from Kindling burnout (the result of overuse of her magical powers), but you got to know her so deeply and intimately that, even though you knew from the beginning that she was doomed, her death felt just as tragic as it would have been if it was completely unexpected, like Emara. What I’m trying to say is that this book destroyed me. Traci Chee knows how to do it a little too well.

All in all, a novel that balanced tenderness and tragedy in equal amounts, making for a poignant novel about war and the bonds that bind us. 4 stars!

Release date: February 27, 2024

Kindling is a standalone, but Traci Chee is also the author of the Sea of Ink and Gold trilogy (The Reader, The Speaker, and The Storyteller), We Are Not Free, and A Thousand Steps Into Night.

Today’s song:

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (1/30/24) – Yellowface

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I’ve had several books by R.F. Kuang on my TBR for a year or two, and I’d forgotten about this one until it happened to come up as one of those “skip the line” checkouts on Libby. I decided to take the opportunity (as the holds line is usually nuts for this book), and I found myself adoring it so much more than I thought it would—a biting and timely satire of the publishing industry.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Yellowface – R.F. Kuang

June Hayward and Athena Liu have been friends since attending Yale together, working through writing projects and slowly finding themselves publishing their own works. But while Athena is enjoying success, six-figure book deals, and Netflix adaptations, June has barely been able to get a third printing of her only book. So when Athena dies in an unexpected accident, June sees the perfect opportunity: steal her unfinished manuscript, pass it off as hers, and profit. Armed with a new pseudonym and a racially ambiguous author photo, June Hayward becomes Juniper Song, and her book, The Last Front, becomes the toast of the literary scene. But evidence is beginning to pile up against her, and June will do anything to keep her newfound fame.

TW/CW: racism, death by choking, vomiting, substance abuse (alcohol), harassment, gaslighting, suicidal ideation

I’m glad I had my expectations at an average level for Yellowface, because this is one of the best satirical novels I’ve read in ages! This novel truly felt like it was attuned to the beating pulse of the dark side of the publishing industry, and it’s an exploration of diversity and publishing that’s incredibly necessary in this day and age.

I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed a novel that’s felt so true to today’s publishing scene in a long time—or ever, really, but to be fair, I haven’t read a lot of realistic fiction books in this vein. Yellowface is a biting, unflinching callout to how publishers view diversity; June’s story, though fictional, is testament to how the publishing industry views diversity and marginalization as profit to be made, not stories and identities to be uplifted, and how once they’ve checked one person of a certain demographic off a checklist, they think they’re set for “diversity.” Beyond that, it’s proof of how willingly publishers will silence marginalized voices in favor of white voices telling the stories of the marginalized, and how far they’re willing to go to keep up the façade. Truth be told, this novel did make me slightly spiral about the state of publishing as an aspiring author, but I suppose that means that R.F. Kuang did her job.

I’ve seen several reviews of Yellowface complaining that at least one of the main characters were self-inserts, but other than the whistleblower character (who only has a minor role until the end), the two main characters were dreadfully unlikable. To be fair, I’m not as familiar with Kuang’s work, but I don’t take her to be the kind of person to be so self-deprecating that she makes her self-insert into a disgusting mess of a character. In fact, Kuang excelled at making them incredibly unlikable—and hilarious in the process. I liked that, although Athena didn’t deserve what she got, that both her and June were depicted as despicable people in their own ways, but June was still portrayed to be disgustingly in the wrong—nobody’s angelic in this situation, and everybody has their flaws, but some people’s flaws pile up until they fester and collapse on top of them (June). Everything written in her voice was so cringey it was hysterical—watching her, for instance, editing the manuscript to make the British soldiers “more sympathetic” cracked me up, and Kuang clearly knew just the kind of circumstances that a white author would twist a marginalized story into—it felt painfully real, and painfully funny at the same time.

Typically, I’m not habitual thriller reader, but I’m a sucker for a story about a character digging their own grave, and god, Yellowface was the perfect scratch for that itch. June’s story of jealousy, temptation, and clinging towards fame that fall like dominoes toward her until culminating in the climax was painful but exhilarating to watch—for me, there’s nothing like watching a character’s downfall right before our eyes. June just kept digging herself further and further into eventual ruin, and with each push closer to the edge of being exposed for her (MANY) wrongdoings, Kuang perfectly amped up the tension. I was definitely white-knuckling my Kindle for a significant portion of the book just because of the sheer audacity of June thinking that none of her actions would amount to anything. It has the same feel as many of the self-destructive arcs in Fargo—the same kind of eventual tension that builds, and all the while, you know exactly how it ends, but what keeps you reading is wanting to discover how everything collapses onto them.

Without spoiling anything, I’ll say something brief about the ending. At first, it seemed a bit rushed and anticlimactic—I still hold that it was slightly rushed, but it’s a way-homer kind of ending. It wasn’t just a continuation of June feeding her own delusion—it’s terrifying proof that the system still works in favor of white authors clearly in the wrong. She may have hit the breaking point, but this controversy, just like the others, will only continue to drive up her sales. The system has not changed. As long as the publishing industry stays the way it is, she’ll still be rewarded. And that was the kind of scary reality that Kuang has proven with this novel.

All in all, a darkly witty thriller that brought a timely conversation about the publishing industry to the table—and executed it stellarly. 4.25 stars!

Yellowface is a standalone, but R.F. Kuang is also the author of the Poppy War trilogy (The Poppy War, The Dragon Republic, and The Burning God) and Babel.

Today’s song:

really and truly OBSESSED with this album

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