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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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!
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!
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!
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.
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!
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.
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!
Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles! Also, a belated Merry Christmas and a Happy Kwanzaa to those celebrating!
To my parents: I tried so hard not to finish this in one day. I tried. But it was just too good. Just like how I devoured The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea around two and a half years ago, its sequel, The Siren, the Song, and the Spy captured my heart, and added some intricate depth, timely commentary, and no shortage of emotion to Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s fantasy world. Also to my parents: thank you so much for the incredible Christmas present!
WARNING: this review may contain spoilers for The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea—tread lightly!
After the Pirate Supreme and their crew wounded the Emperor’s fleet, they have gone into hiding, growing the Resistance that they hope will end the colonial rule that has trapped them for decades. In the ruins of the battle, Genevieve, a loyal daughter of the empire, has washed up on the Red Shore. Now in the company of strangers, she must decide where her loyalties truly lie—and decide for herself if the empire has lied to her all along. Back on the mainland, Alfie is a spy in the Imperial Palace, hoping to tear it down from the inside. But when everyone is hiding false intentions, who can he trust in his quest to see the Resistance win?
Meanwhile, the Sea readies for battle, looking for vengeance after years of the Emperor robbing her of her daughters…
I would have been satisfiedif The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea was a standalone—it had an ambiguous, hopeful ending, and it’s rare to see novels that willingly keep their worlds in one book after an ending styled like that. Usually, when authors go and make said ambiguous but satisfying endings not so ambiguous by expanding the story and the world, it feels hollow—the sequel doesn’t always live up to the original, and sometimes, it just feels like a cash grab. The Siren, the Song, and the Spy is none of these things. It does what every sequel (and duology-closer) should do—it makes the already beloved characters, world, and plot all the more intricate and vast, but has no trouble sticking the landing and wrapping things up.
I think The Siren has the most POVs I’ve ever seen in a single book; some POVs only appear once or twice, but even still, I can think of at least ten (maybe more, I didn’t go back and count) that this novel cycles through over the course of just 320 pages. Usually, any number of POVs over five or six is too much for any author to handle; some characters don’t get developed the way they should, and some of them don’t need the page time or the internal dialogue that other characters need to make the story move forward. Normally, uneven emphasis on certain characters is also a flaw of multiple-POV novels. However, what Tokuda-Hall succeeded in was knowing when characters needed attention and when they didn’t; some chapters are dedicated to side characters, but they’re few and far between, and often shorter than the main character chapters. And somehow, by a stroke of luck, all of them felt necessary to the narrative—and all of them were compelling. Even minor antagonists got their time in the spotlight, but Tokuda-Hall used those moments to her advantage—sometimes, these chapters were more to reveal secrets than to peer inside characters’ heads. It’s a skill that very few authors have, but The Siren proved that Maggie Tokuda-Hall is incredibly adept at the art of the multiple-POV novel.
With Evelyn and Florian mostly out of the picture, The Siren develops many of the side characters present in The Mermaid—many of whom got necessary backstories, and often, something of a redemption arc. I didn’t expect to start rooting for Alfie after everything that he did in The Mermaid, but Tokuda-Hall did an excellent job of making him come to realize the error in his ways, and at least partially put him on the path to improvement. I don’t fully believe that he can ever be fully forgiven, and Tokuda-Hall acknowledges that, but what she’s also very skilled at is created complicated characters—”morally gray,” as much as it’s become a buzzword in both book communities and publishing these days, really is the best word for it. The difference is that Tokuda-Hall actually seems to know what the term really means. Introducing a batch of new characters (and not taking the easy route and killing a bunch of them off) was also a tricky task to surmount for Siren, but both the new characters and locations elevated the novel a ton; Koa and Kaia worked incredibly off of each other as siblings with wildly different personalities, and they meshed easily with some of the already established characters like Genevieve. And as with Mermaid, Siren is full of diversity—most of the new characters are people of color (as are most of the characters in the novel), and we also have Kaia, who has one hand, and a character who uses neopronouns.
Speaking of Genevieve…
I was already excited to see what Genevieve would do next after how Mermaid left off, but that was mostly because of how cunning of a character she was. At first, it didn’t seem necessary to me for her to have a redemption arc—she could have been such a sneaky minor villain, and I would’ve enjoyed seeing that develop. But her character arc was so much more than redemption—it was one of the most well-written case studies in colonial brainwashing and subsequent decolonization that I’ve read in years. What with her POV jumping back and forth between the past and the present, you can see exactly the kind of manipulation that went into her being duped into believing in Lady Ayer and the Emperor, betraying her own identity in the process. Her change of heart wasn’t straightforward either—it was plenty messy, and it wasn’t until she actually witnessed a full-on genocide that she realized what the empire was actually doing all along, but the messiness in the middle was what made her arc so memorable. Decolonizing one’s identity is anything but straightforward, and Genevieve’s journey of restructuring her beliefs and identity was rocky—as it should have been. Genevieve alone should be proof of Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s incredible skill in crafting authentic, messy characters.
On the subject of colonization and decolonization, I also appreciate the realistic—and unrelentingly anti-colonial—approach that Tokuda-Hall took to bringing down the empire. The stakes built up over both books made them feel like a real threat, and not just a hollow “evil empire” that’s only evil because the author takes great pains to tell you so. (Basing this empire off of multiple real-life examples of colonialism probably helped, but my point still stands.) The initial takedown was was incredibly emotional, and appropriately incorporated the awesome forces of the Sea. But after that final battle, what stuck out to me the most was the epilogue; it was very brief and appropriately hopeful, but what it emphasized was so important to understanding the process of decolonization—it’s messy. Even several years after the fact, everything isn’t magically fixed—things take time to rebuild, and not everybody instantly changes their minds. In such a short amount of time, Tokuda-Hall managed to portray an essential reality of colonialism that most sci-fi and fantasy narratives miss: change isn’t instantaneous, and the limbo between changes in power is a long, messy process.
All in all, a worthy sequel that proves Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s many, incredible special talents as an author—juggling dozens of POVs with ease, writing flawed characters with complicated arcs, and giving both colonialism and decolonization with the nuance that’s often missing from fantasy and sci-fi portrayals of the subject. 4.5 stars!
The Siren, the Song, and the Spy is the sequel to The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea, and is the end of the duology. Maggie Tokuda-Hall is also the author of several picture books and graphic novels, including Also an Octopus, Love in the Library, Squad, and the forthcoming The Worst Ronin.
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!
The Deepy Sky came out this July, and I’ve been seeing a ton of buzz about it around the blogosphere since. I’m always in for a sci-fi thriller, and this one delivered in that aspect, as well as the wonderful mixed-race rep!
Asuka has been chosen as a representative on a mission to deep space, where she will help give birth the next generation of Earth’s children. But she has been chosen to represent Japan—a country she barely knows, as a half-Japanese, half-Latina girl raised in the United States. Feeling like an imposter to an unfamiliar country, she accepts her duty and joins the crew of the Phoenix. But a deadly explosion onboard the ship leaves her the only surviving witness. With all eyes on her once more, Asuka must get to the bottom of the explosion before the perpetrator strikes again.
TW/CW: racism, terrorism, miscarriage/fertility themes, death of a child
“Literary” sci-fi rarely does it for me; most of what I’ve read barely scrapes past the 3.5 star rating for me, at best. Often, what happens is that the sci-fi element gets significantly watered down for the sake of marketability, drama, and a place in a celebrity’s book club (see: Sea of Tranquility, In the Quick). But The Deep Sky had the chops to make itself unique—and incredibly poignant.
The sci-fi plot of The Deep Sky is pretty standard as far as story elements go, but Kitasei’s approach to it made it feel fresh. It’s the setup for a myriad of sci-fi thrillers: you’ve got a large crew voyaging through the depths of space, only for a tragic accident to leave everyone onboard in suspicion, with no way to get back to Earth. It’s not necessarily a new approach plot-wise that keeps it going—it’s the emotional core that Kitasei brings to it. You’re really able to see deeply into Asuka’s head, deeper than a lot of authors dare to go with these kinds of stories; it’s a great way to increase the stakes without having to complicate the mystery of the story.
Also, LET’S HEAR IT FOR MIXED-RACE REPRESENTATION!! I’ve been on a roll with books with amazing mixed-race characters and stories lately (see also: Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony—a very different book, but no less poignant), and as a mixed-race person, I’m so glad that narratives like these exist. Kitasei’s depiction of the imposter syndrome that Asuka faces about her identity is twofold—not only is there the level of it that comes with her being of Japanese and Mexican descent in the U.S., but also in the fact that she has to represent Japan—a country that she’s barely been to—in this mission. It really did make me feel so, so seen. Kitasei’s portrayal of having these intersecting identities and them coming at odds with how others want to box you in was deeply moving and authentic, and I cannot thank her enough for that.
Back to the subject of literary sci-fi. A lot of these types of novels that I’ve read deal with intersecting, nonlinear timelines, which may or may not have to do with actual time travel (case dependent). For the most part, it worked incredibly in Kitasei’s favor—even outside what we can consider the “main” plot, the pieces that we get of Asuka’s life before the deep space mission were almost more intriguing than the actual murder mystery in space. Kitasei’s character work is incredibly detailed and nuanced, and having most of this novel be driven by character and family was a choice that made me enjoy it that much more. These types of sci-fi thrillers normally lend themselves to very distant characters, and minimal character work by proxy (outside of “trust no one”), so this was a breath of fresh air in that sense.
That being said, the nonlinear timeline was also what brought part of the novel down for me. There’s much more emphasis placed on the time before the mission than the actual mission, making the murder mystery plot feel like an afterthought. The way that these timelines were spaced out meant that we went long stretches without checking in on what’s supposed to be the novel’s inciting incident, which made the stakes feel much lower than they were meant to be. The tension got appropriately amped towards the end, but other than that, there really wasn’t as much thriller as I was expecting going in. Maybe this is just a matter of how The Deep Sky was marketed, but I did wish we got a little more of the “main” plot.
All in all, a rare gem of a literary sci-fi novel where every page brimmed with emotion and suspicion. 4 stars!
The Deep Sky is a standalone; it is also Yume Kitasei’s debut novel.
Today’s song:
listened to my first Arlo Parks album, and I’m a fan!! this was my favorite, for sure
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Fingers crossed, I should be able to keep up with at least these reviews and my Sunday Songs now. Plus, I’ve read some good books lately, and I’m itching to write a full-length review! Especially about this one. I’ve seen it here and there on the blogosphere, and it’s getting average reviews on Goodreads as of now; I don’t usually gravitate towards historical fiction, but Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea was such an engrossing read!
The pirate Shek-Yeung has a reputation that precedes her. After her husband is murdered by a Portuguese sailor, she takes it upon herself to do everything in her power to take his fleet for her own, starting with marrying her husband’s second in command and having his son. With the ship under her iron rule, she becomes just as feared as her husband once was. But as the Emperor of China begins a crackdown on piracy and her crew begins to turn against her, Shek-Yeung must grapple with the power that is slipping through her fingers—and taking care of her new son.
TW/CW: blood, gore, near-death situations, descriptions of illness, loss of loved ones, misogyny
I love a good swashbuckling pirate book, so I never considered that a more grounded pirate story could possibly exist. And it does—its name is Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea, and it has just as much of a punch and importance, even if it lacks the conventional adventuring that typically comes along with pirate stories.
I’m not usually much for historical fiction; it’s not a genre that I typically gravitate towards, but if I pick it up, it’s usually because it’s intertwined with another genre (fantasy, etc.). Literary historical fiction, even less so—that usually brings to mind the thousands of WWII novels with the exact same font that I always have to reshelve at the library. But Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea occupies a very unique niche. It has all of the diligent research and worldbuilding of any good historical fiction, with a fair dose of drama and an emotional core that sets it apart from the often distant literary fiction novels that I can think of. Even though I know next to nothing about the time period in which its set (listen, I took AP World History online, you can understand my situation), Chang-Eppig clearly put so much time into fleshing out Shek-Yeung’s world—and all of it paid off.
On that note, I’ve seen a lot of complaints about this book having dry writing. At times, the worldbuilding and negotiations did trail in the slightest, but to me, this novel was just the right amount of captivating. Even with all of said drama and heavy plot points, the writing felt cinematic—I don’t mean that in the way of a blockbuster, but of that special kind of Oscar-winner that you actually watched and enjoyed. It knew when to hold its breath and let the silence fill the page, and it knew when to make your emotions swell. I wouldn’t call it perfect, but it’s impressive enough that I’m wowed by the fact that this is Chang-Eppig’s debut novel. I’d gladly watch a movie adaptation of this book.
The characterization in Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea was just as stellar as the other aspects! Shek-Yeung was such an expertly written protagonist in almost every way that I can think of. Chang-Eppig captured every aspect of her personality effortlessly; she lives at that intersection of aging and legacy where she isn’t as physically strong as she was in her youth, but she’s just as fearsome and skilled as she was back then. She’s been beaten down by the trials of womanhood and the shadows of her past trailing her, but is slowly learning to love again. Every part of her was nothing short of captivating, and she was the perfect emotional core for the story, even if she was reluctant to show her own. The side characters were just as wonderful as well, and the perfect foils to Shek-Yeung. Yan-Yan was my absolute favorite. She was just the sweetest…my girl needs a hug
That being said, I feel like more could have been done with Shek-Yeung’s character development at the end of the novel—and the ending of the novel in general. Throughout the novel, Shek-Yeung basically had that mentality of “we’re all just meat sacks on a floating rock and we’re all just animals that don’t care about each other” (it’d be insufferable on any other character, but…she’s a middle-aged pirate in the Qing Dynasty who’s just witnessed the brutal murder of her husband, I can at least kind of see it in her case). But most of the smaller arcs with her seemed to be leading up to her learning how to heal and love again, what with her son and with the rest of her crew (esp. the more optimistic Yan-Yan). But even after the climactic events of the last part of the novel, she hardly seemed to change. It just didn’t make sense for her, who’d been so well-written up until this point, to suddenly go static. Most of the ending felt rushed in general—it felt ambiguously but not necessarily in a literary way, but more in an “I don’t know how to end this book, so I’m going to write a few more sentences and call it a day” kind of way. It just felt like such a disservice to what was an otherwise stellar novel.
All in all, a beautiful historical drama with some of the most well-written characters I’ve read in a while. 4 stars!
Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea is a standalone; it is also Rita Chang-Eppig’s debut novel.
Today’s song:
favorite song from this album!!
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
I’ve been eyeing this book for a while—I remember it being heavily advertised on Goodreads when it was first released, and normally, I don’t pay much attention to Goodreads ads or sponsored books, but all you had to say was “space opera” and I was hooked. I’m a woman of simple tastes. It was cheap on the Kindle library, so I bought it to read on vacation. To my excitement, it ended up being my favorite book that I read on vacation—so detailed and gripping!
Jayanthi, like all other humans in her day and age, are confined to Earth. Kept there by the Alloys, evolved human descendants with advanced capabilities, she has been raised by Alloy parents on her homeworld, but has always dreamed of seeing the wider galaxy. But when an opportunity arises for Jayanthi to explore the newly discovered planet Meru with the aid of an Alloy pilot, she jumps at the chance—what better way to show the galaxy that humans are more than their violent past?
With the help of Vaya, her Alloy pilot, Jayanthi touches down on Meru. Soon, they find themselves embroiled in a human-alloy conflict, seemingly engineered to separate the two of them. Will Jayanthi and Vaya beat the odds—and restore faith in the human race?
TW/CW: ableism, xenophobia (fictional), sexual content/pregnancy, descriptions of injury, sci-fi violence
I got carsick while reading this book, but I don’t hold it against it at all. That was on me and my hubris of thinking that I wouldn’t get nauseous on a long car trip just this once. Whoops.
Reading some of the lower-rated reviews of Meru is kind of cracking me up…listen. I get that zie/zir pronouns (and neopronouns in general) are somewhat obscure, but of all the absolutely wild, dense, and out-there concepts that this book throws at you, that’s what makes you jump ship? Not the exceedingly complicated…well, everything else?
That being said, Meru lived up to the hype I’ve seen it getting for the past few months! It hit a sweet spot for me that a lot of sci-fi and fantasy books rarely do—creating a complex and multilayered universe, but very delicately balancing when and where to deliver all of this information. Divya came very close to going over the edge, but she navigated the worldbuilding delivery with aplomb.
So, about said worldbuilding. I’d say that Meru isn’t for the faint of heart, even for longtime sci-fi fans—as I mentioned in the beginning of the review, there’s a lot to take in, from the post-human history of the Alloys to all of the machinations surrounding new genetic modification laws in the future. But even though we do get some of this information in larger chunks, Divya excels at navigating which information is actually relevant to the scene it’s informing, and not sledgehammering you with extra information that only becomes relevant elsewhere in the book. It also helps that every inch of said worldbuilding is truly fascinating—it’s clear to see how much care was put into the creation of this universe.
If you’re talking about disability in sci-fi, you’re generally bound to open a particularly dicey can of worms. There’s quite a lot of eugenics narratives that a lot of readers have let slide for years, and the narrative of curing all disabilities is seen as positive, when a lot of the disabilities being described never needed curing in the first place. For the sake of this review, I’ll keep it short, but the bottom line is that it’s gross. But Meru takes a refreshing perspective on disability in sci-fi—not only was Jayanthi, the protagonist, specifically engineered to have sickle-cell anemia (now THAT’S a subversion I like), her disability is depicted in a far more advantageous and positive light. Anyone who’s ever touched a high school biology textbook probably remembers this example: despite its drawbacks, those with sickle-cell also have increased resistance to many tropical diseases. That’s exactly the case for Jayanthi, whose sickle-cell anemia makes her more suited to the environment of the planet Meru than those without it. Positive disability rep is good enough, but having it specifically depicted as something that gives the character the edge is something special. That, along with the wonderful discussions around disability and bodily autonomy (both allegorical and literal), made Meru a wonderful experience for me as a disabled reader.
In addition, Divya has created such a vibrant cast of characters in Meru! Jayanthi was such an endearing and powerful protagonist, and her relationship with the equally endearing Vaha was full of tenderness, despite its ups and downs. Almost all of the cast added to the book’s masterful suspense and tension, making you feel deeply for all of the relevant characters before things got (very) hairy. Plus, the integration of Sanskrit, several Indian-coded (and other POC characters), and loads of casual queerness was a breath of fresh air from all of the white, male, cishet sci-fi that still dominates the market. We need more books like Meru.
All in all, an intricately-crafted sci-fi novel that dazzled with its detailed worldbuilding, diversity, and refreshing discussions around disability. 4 stars!
Meru is the first book in S.B. Divya’s Alloy Era series, continued by the forthcoming Loka, slated for release in July of 2024. Divya is also the author of Machinehood and Run Time, as well as a contributor to several short story collections.
Today’s song:
NEW SMILE IT’S SO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD (does this mean that we’re closer to hearing “Read the Room” too?????
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
The Bookish Mutant 