Tag: book review

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

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

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

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

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

Enjoy this week’s review!

Sunward – William Alexander

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today’s song:

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

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (9/15/26) – Summer in the City of Roses

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles, and more importantly, happy National Hispanic & Latine Heritage Month!

I’m kicking off the occasion with a novel that’s been languishing on my TBR for way too long. I don’t remember where exactly I heard about it, but I was intrigued by the cover and the unusual premise. Though I wasn’t immediately familiar with the myths and fairytales that it drew from, Summer in the City of Roses stands as something uniquely itself, regardless of its inspirations.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Summer in the City of Roses – Michelle Ruiz Keil

Iph and Orr are inseparable. Ever since Orr began showing signs of anxiety, Iph has been his protector, making their way around Portland in the early ’90s together. But when their father sends Orr off to a wilderness camp without Iph’s knowledge, she’s beyond betrayed. Unbeknownst to Iph, Orr snuck off into the woods the minute that he arrived at the camp. Now on separate journeys to find their way back to each other, Iph and Orr will stop at nothing to reunite, no matter the bizarre trials they encounter on the way.

TW/CW: transphobia/deadnaming, kidnapping, substance abuse, animal cruelty, homophobia, domestic violence

First off: this is a weird book. It’s weirder than a lot of mainstream YA dares to get, which I greatly enjoyed. In a publishing landscape dominated by all manner of fairytale and myth retellings, Summer in the City of Roses dared to do something radically new, and while it wasn’t completely successful, it’s a bright spot of individuality in the YA landscape.

I wasn’t familiar with the myth of Iphigenia or the Brothers Grimm’s “Brother and Sister,” the two fairytales and myths that Summer in the City of Roses was based on; once I looked into them more, there were so many fun Easter eggs that were hidden throughout. But even without that context, it felt so much like a fairytale. The strange, winding nature of the plot, as well as the oddball characters that Iph and Orr encounter along their quest, were so archetypal, but beyond that, just pure fun. Ruiz Keil’s prose gave the novel a Wes Anderson feel, especially when it came to the narrative voice and the way the characters acted and spoke. (George felt very Rushmore to me.) There’s a wandering nonbinary Robin Hood type with a mini pitbull, a band of Riot Grrrls, covens of witches from San Fransisco—it’s just unabashedly ’90s and unabashedly quirky, at that. It’s just so charming all the way through. And though I’ve never been to Portland—much less in the early ’90s—Ruiz Keil’s love for the city shone through in every page. There’s a lot of fun references to the pop culture and music scene at the time, as well as past musical movements (BRIAN ENO AND OBLIQUE STRATEGIES MENTIONED!!) It’s a charming, punk fairytale dressed in flannel with the spirit of Riot Grrrl activism and siblingly love. Summer in the City of Roses is seriously one of a kind.

Iph and Orr are at the heart of Summer in the City of Roses, and their relationship was written so tenderly. Iph’s uncertain yet determined spirit was so poignant, and Ruiz Keil captured that feeling of being a teenage girl at the crossroads of life so well. Her experiences with her mixed-race identity, with a Greek father and a Mexican mother who was rather secretive about her culture and past, resonated so much with me as a mixed-race person with Latine heritage. Orr was so wonderful, and his sensitive was dealt with so well; I also loved seeing both Iph and Orr casually come into their queerness. What stood out to me though was that despite there being all of this amazing representation, Ruiz Keil didn’t automatically translate it into modern terms that would’ve been out of place in the ’90s. (She talks in the author’s note about not choosing to use any pronouns for George, as nonbinary identity wasn’t as well known/understood in the mainstream ’90s culture as it is today, although it existed without question.) Iph and Orr are decidedly queer, and Orr is decidedly neurodivergent; a less deft author would’ve inserted all manner of 2020’s therapy/PSA-speak into the narrative, but Ruiz Keil toed the line between modernizing their identities while still respecting them as identities that existed in the ’90s, and have always been a part of history.

Naturally, a book dealing with the Riot Grrrl movement and the punk/activist culture of Portland in the ’90s would deal with a lot of social issues, and Summer in the City of Roses certainly did. Not a lot of YA literature deals with subjects surrounding sex work, especially considering the audience; but I like that Ruiz Keil touches on this, and humanizes sex workers and explains a lot of the rationale behind the activism. There are discussions about homophobia and transphobia, Latine and mixed-race identity, spirituality, and unhoused people, but through it all, what made it so meaningful was that Ruiz Keil took such a great deal of care in humanizing all of the marginalized groups she talks about. That being said, a lot of these discussions are delivered in a kind of PSA style at the worst of times; this style is also applied to any other subject that Iph learns about, which made some of the discussions drag for me. However, this is YA, and for a teen audience unfamiliar with these subjects, it might be more beneficial. Chances are, it was only an issue for me because I’ve aged out of the target audience.

A lot of the reviews for Summer in the City of Roses commented on how jarring the transition in this novel was from fairytale-inspired realistic fiction to straight-up magical realism. To be fair, I saw that it had been tagged on the Storygraph as magical realism, so I had some idea of what I was in for. Once I got to this portion of the story, the genre transition wasn’t that abrupt to me: Ruiz Keil’s writing already had the air of a fairytale, even if the actual fantastical elements didn’t come in until the eleventh hour. My problem was more about their execution. The hard left turn into fantasy was quite messy; it’s clear that Ruiz Keil had a lot of ideas and a lot to say about them, but they all tangled into a jumbled mess at the end. The ending had the potential to be so powerful, but everything was so tangled that the message got lost. I feel like part of the issue is that it needed more time to breathe—50 more pages would’ve done the trick for making sure that this element felt substantially integrated into the narrative. Summer in the City of Roses was just shy of a 4-star read for me, but this mishandled ending was why it didn’t get the full 4 stars from me in the end.

All in all, a daringly weird and ambitious novel with lots of aspirations—most of them fulfilled, but with some unfortunately left in pieces. 3.75 stars!

Summer in the City of Roses is a standalone, but Michelle Ruiz Keil is also the author of All Of Us With Wings and contributed to the anthology Dispatches from Anarres: Tales in Tribute to Ursula K. LeGuin.

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 (9/8/26) – The Folded Sky (White Space, #3)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I got hooked on Elizabeth Bear’s White Space series back in January. I figured I’d order The Folded Sky (on Bookshop.org of course…if you’re still ordering books on Amazon, go here instead!! Your money goes to indie bookstores and not Bezos!) with some leftover birthday money. Like all the other installations in this series, The Folded Sky did not disappoint.

NOTE: The Folded Sky is the third book in the White Space series, and while it doesn’t contain spoilers for books 1 and 2, it’s difficult to understand without the context that they give. For my reviews of the first two books, click below!

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Folded Sky (White Space, #3) – Elizabeth Bear

Dr. Sunyata Song was supposed to live a quiet life as a historian. Her studies of the Baomind—an ancient, moon-sized artificial intelligence created by a long-dead alien race—have so far not disturbed this. But a once-in-a-lifetime research opportunity to study the Baomind drags Sunya, her wife, and her two teenage kids out to the farthest edges of the galaxy. Sunya is elated, but she soon realizes that she’s in over her head, between the presence of her longtime academic rival, a potential murder plot, and the dying red giant that the Baomind orbits. In the midst of all this conflict, Sunya must make a choice as to what matters most to her—and all of the people around her.

TW/CW: kidnapping, child endangerment, gun violence, murder

Whoever was in charge of writing a succinct blurb for the back of this book needs a raise. Seriously. There is so much going on in The Folded Sky, and the blurb is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s the giant alien AI, of course. But that’s not even the biggest plot point. You’ve got pirates. Incredibly heated historian beef. A murder mystery on a janky space station. Red giants with horrifying implications. Did I mention pirates?

Elizabeth Bear’s characters are the reason that the White Space series as a whole works so well. Book by book, she’s not only created an increasingly multilayered and complex world, but shown it to us through the eyes of people (and systers) who are refreshingly flawed and lovable. I was already sold on the concept of a sleep-deprived, slightly-too-committed historian and her long-suffering but patient alien wife as the protagonists already, but Bear developed them so far beyond that concept; Sunya was one of the series’s most well-realized characters. She’s somebody who tries so hard to be civil and unbiased, but is not-so-secretly very impulsive and prone to being hotheaded—it’s a funny combination, but more importantly, it felt so real. Anybody with a strong sense of justice who’s also incredibly emotional can relate—all of her righteous seething about Vickee was so relatable. Her family dynamic was so heartwarming; Bear could’ve easily gone down the “teenagers are so annoying, hahaha look at them being stupid” route, but I loved how Salvie points out that Luna’s outbursts are just versions of Sunya herself (much to her dismay). Salvie and Sunya were such a lovely couple, and their devotion to their children—and justice as a whole—was the novel’s beating heart. Aside from Salvie being an alien, they felt like a family you could meet any old day, and that’s what sets the White Space series apart as a whole—nobody makes aliens (and people) as real as Bear.

Just when you think the worldbuilding of the White Space series can’t possibly get better…IT’S ELIZABETH BEAR WITH THE STEEL CHAIR!! INCOMPREHENSIBLE MOON-SIZED AI, COMIN’ RIGHT ATCHA! I love her no-holds-barred approach to making the Synarche unabashedly weird, and she followed through on that mission in The Folded Sky. This novel takes us to the more backwater, less technologically-advanced parts of the universe, and the experience of seeing what’s considered backwater in the first place is. All of the new Systers that get introduced were delightful. (Dr. Nonsense was a favorite of mine…you know I love a cephalopod, but Bear did an excellent job of making it more than just a cephalopod in space!) The Baomind itself was so meticulously thought-out, and even after Machine, Bear really pushes the limits on how strange robots and AI can get; I loved the song communication, and the twists that Sunya discovers in her studies are too fascinating to spoil. Either way, it’s proof that Bear is a worldbuilder in her prime, and this series is all th better for it.

The main reason that The Folded Sky didn’t get the full 5 stars from me was the pacing; for a series whose books that I’ve routinely gobbled up hundreds of pages of in one sitting, The Folded Sky had a slower start. But once that hurdle was jumped over, this novel was excellently executed from start to finish. I mentioned the dozens of disparate plot elements earlier, and juggling all of them would be a Herculean task for any author (much less whoever had to condense all that into a blurb). What struck me about The Folded Sky is that out of all of those facets of the plot, none of them were treated as afterthoughts. They were all a critical part of the tangled web of the novel. The murder mystery was just as compelling as Sunya’s historical work, as was the rivalry she had with Vickee and the pirates and everything else. Bear made it look easy, connecting threads that I couldn’t imagine connecting. Of course, it wasn’t perfect—in addition to the beginning, the climax was more drawn out than felt reasonable—but for a plot this jam-packed with different elements, Bear pulled it off surprisingly well.

But I feel like the chaos that the characters are mired in was so crucial to the central themes of The Folded Sky. For one thing, there was the whole Folded Sky concept in a series, and its connections to integrative complexity (new concept that I learned! And they say that only nonfiction is educational…thanks, Elizabeth Bear!) and being able to see issues and their consequences from multiple perspectives, and not, as Dr. Nonsense said, a human binary of only two sides. That was already a very powerful theme, but the chaos also related back to Sunya and her family. Though I don’t have any firsthand experience with parenthood, I loved how this theme was written; you bring children into the world, and you want to protect them from a world that is often cruel and unpredictable, and while you can’t protect them from everything, you desperately want to try. And either way, Sunya and her family are able to keep somewhat levelheaded because of the love they have for each other, and the love that they foster in their community. Overall, The Folded Sky is an ode to the power of multiplicity and many perspectives, whether that’s community-building, family, or studying history.

One more bonus point—look, I know “Life On Mars?” is one of Bowie’s most well-known songs, but the fact that it was referenced in passing still made me giddy.

All in all, a poignant and deeply moving addition to one of the best space opera series out there today. 4.5 stars!

The Folded Sky is the third book in the White Space series, preceded by Ancestral Night (1) and Machine (2). Elizabeth Bear is also the author of several other series, including the New Amsterdam series (New Amsterdam, Seven for a Secret, The White City, Ad Eternum, and Garrett Investigates), the Jacob’s Ladder trilogy (Dust, Sanction, and Grail) and many others.

Today’s song:

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 (8/25/26) – Ode to the Half-Broken

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I found about Ode to the Half-Broken on Instagram via my best friend, who I read this a few days apart from. You know me—I love cozy sci-fi, and this seemed to fit my taste perfectly. Although it didn’t live up to all of my expectations, Ode to the Half-Broken was a solid tale of forgiveness, regret, and letting go.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Ode to the Half-Broken – Suzanne Palmer

Be was designed for war. Twenty years ago, they were created as an unstoppable killing machine and committed countless atrocities in the name of their master. Now, living in the overgrown ruins of the New York Botanical Gardens, they seek to live a quiet life, unencumbered by their past. But an attack that takes their leg leaves Be no choice but to search the ruins of New York City for answers—and what they find might signal another period of darkness for humanity. Joined by Atticus, a cyborg dog with a smart mouth, Be must come to terms with the changing world around them—and the fact that they have changed along with it.

TW/CW: violence, climate change themes/natural disasters, death, descriptions of injury, pandemic, suicide

Without a doubt, the most striking thing about Ode to the Half-Broken was its worldbuilding! Suzanne Palmer did an exceptional job of crafting a vision of post-apocalyptic New York City. Her prose when describing this setting created such a vivid image of an overgrown, partly-in-ruins city. But in terms of the worldbuilding, Palmer really put her money where her mouth was. Through a series of flashbacks spanning several decades, we get so much in-depth information about the climate crisis and how it led to New York City becoming how it is now. Palmer also details so many unique kinds of robots, as well as the complicated relationship that they have with humans, which was very nuanced. Granted, if you’re inclined to climate doom (as I often am), I’d proceed with caution, but it’s at least proof that Palmer did exhaustive research on all of the possibilities stemming from unchecked climate change, from pandemics to the reshaping of our ecosystems. It all felt real, and it was very much a call to action to stop this vision of the future before it’s too late. If nothing else, Ode to the Half-Broken was a great piece of cli-fi that documented the grim potentialities of climate change while not completely collapsing into doom—there’s a vibrant flame of hope that never gets snuffed out.

For the most part, Ode to the Half-Broken worked as a more slow-paced novel. Having read a lot of cozy sci-fi, I feel like this novel qualifies, although the ending certainly pushes the boundary. It’s cozy sci-fi in the way that The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is: quiet and contemplative, but still readily acknowledging the existence of violence and other societal ills. I loved this novel’s readiness to dwell in the quieter moments, and be content to have long stretches of mostly conversation and ordinary human (and robot) interactions. The pacing was tight, but I think it faltered at the last moments. Palmer pulls off the rare feat of balancing flashbacks with the present in a way that felt natural—they were key to building up to the eventual villain, as well as informing us about the world without vomiting infodumps on the reader—something that’s so hard to do! The climax happens quickly and quite messily, and with a rather abrupt ending; one of the key villains was introduced at the eleventh hour, making the aftermath and ending of Ode to the Half-Broken feel unresolved and sloppy. After all that mess, it just sort of ended at a seemingly random moment—I think this novel would’ve been more successful if, like most of the rest of it, it had been willing to wallow in the feeling for longer. But for the most part, this novel was solidly plotted and paced.

Ode to the Half-Broken was built on character work, from the structure of the novel to the marketing. Unfortunately, that’s the element where it suffered the most. I liked the concepts of all of the characters, but the execution of them left something to be desired. It was mostly their voices that didn’t work for me—Palmer’s writing style was one that I mostly enjoyed, but her character voices were either uninteresting or grating. Be didn’t have a whole lot of personality, and even when they became more of an autonomous being, their personality was quite boring. Most of Atticus’s page time consisted of him delivering corny, MCU-style “witty” one-liners, and he just got on my nerves to no end. (Sidenote: I imagined his voice like Rizzo the Rat from The Muppets. Not sure if that hindered or helped that image. Do with that what you will.) To be fair, Litchfield was an interesting villain, but his character was built up in more organic flashbacks, and not in real time. I didn’t feel one way or another about Murphy, as well as the other side characters—again, the issue was that they were all good concepts, but Palmer didn’t deliver on them beyond the idea of them.

That issue is exacerbated in Be’s arc. A lot hinged on their arc of having to let go of their past, but the issue was that this arc didn’t really change. By the time that we begin Ode to the Half-Broken, they’ve already come to the conclusion that the world has changed, and that they have an active role in making sure that they don’t do any more harm. I think there was an attempted message of the answer being integrating yourself in community instead of self-isolating, which is an arc that I normally would have adored, but I don’t think it was executed as well; with the exception of Be and Atticus, none of the other characters seemed to change much after they were introduced to one another. It comes back around to Palmer’s mediocre character work; with more effort put into the characters, this could’ve been a beautifully-written message about the positive change that community can have on your life and in the world at large (as well as being against hyper-individualism), but the result felt like an afterthought without much tangible character development.

All in all, a dystopia with a richly-imagined world, but that faltered in the very thing it advertised as its draw: its characters. 3.5 stars!

Ode to the Half-Broken is a standalone, but Suzanne Palmer is also the author of the Finder Chronicles (Finder, Driving the Deep, The Scavenger Door, and Ghostdrift).

Today’s song:

I could listen to this song all day!! god, I’m obsessed

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 (8/11/26) – The Celestial Seas

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Have I read Moby Dick? Nope. Do I intend to? It’s not a high priority. But will I read any sci-fi retelling of it? Absolutely.

There’s such a dearth of YA sci-fi, so much so that the tagline for The Celestial Seas compares it to two very different books (Aurora Rising and Iron Widow). It’s so sad that there’s not even enough popular books to make a valid comparison to this novel, even if it is just a marketing technique. And though it wasn’t without its issues, The Celestial Seas is a wonderfully weird addition to the pantheon of YA space opera.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Celestial Seas – T.A. Chan

Years ago, a giant Ballena—a sentient biological spacecraft in the shape of a whale—destroyed an entire spacefaring whaler, leaving Ishara Ming as the sole survivor. Now, with a scrappy crew and rapidly dwindling supplies, she’s on the hunt to avenge her former shipmates. They all dismiss her thirst for revenge as delusion, but Ishara knows what she saw. But when Augustus, a mysterious mechanic who wants to kill this Ballena as much as her, appears on their ship, Ishara begins to question the truth of her bloody memories—and whether this thankless whaling quest is worth it at all.

TW/CW: descriptions of injury, loss of loved ones, substance abuse, murder, violence

First off, I’m in love with this book cover! I’m obsessed with Carolina R. Fuenmayor’s style, and it suits Chan’s book wonderfully. AND SHE’S COLOMBIAN!! LET’S GOOOOOOO

I’ve never read Moby Dick, but if there’s one thing that promises some good old-fashioned sci-fi weirdness, it’s a sci-fi retelling of Moby Dick. (The other one that comes to mind is China Miéville’s gloriously bonkers Railsea, which I liked much better than this, but it’s a hard act to follow.) I’ve absorbed enough from pop culture to know the gist of the story, so it’s not all that hard to understand without the context of the book. Either way you look at it, The Celestial Seas is a spirited YA debut with undeniable charm.

Half of the fun of The Celestial Seas was diving into the worldbuilding. It’s a refreshingly original setting. You’ve got your sentient space whale-ships, for starters, but it only gets better from there. We’ve got a win for the Latines in space, because some sort of Pan-Latin-American coalition ends up settling a large portion of space before the events of the novel, and a lot of the slang was informed by Spanish; for Ishara, there’s also remnants of Mandarin Chinese that remained in her original language, which was also super cool. There’s got all sorts of cultural and technological quirks to pick apart. T.A. Chan covered all of her bases when it came to the worldbuilding, and it showed. The one caveat was that Chan plunges you headfirst into said worldbuilding—a lot of the information I just talked about isn’t explained in-scene; personally, I don’t think it’s much of a problem, since it’s easily decipherable thanks to context clues. But there sure is a lot of sci-fi technobabble, so buckle up. Personally, I think it was all part of the charm.

Saying that I loved Ishara as a protagonist is complicated. She was developed fantastically, but I really wasn’t a fan of her personality. Is she likable? Not really, no—not until the last third of the novel, to be honest. But does it work for the novel? Absolutely. Especially given Moby Dick, Ishara’s bloodlust (is it bloodlust if it’s a sentient spaceship? Ishara certainly doesn’t think so) and grief were exactly the kind of protagonist that The Celestial Seas needed. Chan was unafraid of making Ishara flawed and reckless. She had an excellent arc by the end of the novel, and I loved how her quest for the Ballena tied into questions about her identity, and whether or not it was worth it to base her entire life’s purpose on the past and a singular, dangerous goal—and whether it was worth it to brazenly risk the lives of her crew along the way. Quinn and Augustus were both solid foils to Ishara, and I’m glad that they haven’t turned into a love triangle…yet.

Unfortunately, that same care wasn’t afforded to the rest of the cast of The Celestial Seas. To a point, it’s understandable; you’ve got a whole crew of a spaceship, and there’s not that much time to develop every single one of them. That would be excusable, if not for two things. First off, most of the supporting cast (aside from Quinn and Augustus) had a single, shared personality—they were each assigned a job, and then they all got a turn pushing the sarcastic one-liner button when the time called for it. Second, by the end of The Celestial Seas, we’re all supposed to care so deeply for all of them, as evidenced by the impassioned inner and outer monologues given by Ishara; of course, they had almost no importance to the plot, so all of said monologues felt hollow. I get that every novel with a largish cast doesn’t have time to make everybody the star, but Chan left everybody but three people in the dust.

Chan’s writing style was solid, but it had some pitfalls that dragged The Celestial Seas down. Her renderings of the celestial sea in question were nothing short of immersive, and she nailed that sci-fi charm of new slang and technobabble without drowning the interactions between the characters. However, there are places where Chan holds your hand in a way that felt too much, even for YA. (Probably not even suited for YA—yes, the audience are younger, but you don’t insult the intelligence of teenagers, of all demographics!) Like Ishara’s Big Emotional Speech during the climax, there were moments where Chan unceremoniously shoved the Big Message in our faces, which got old quickly. I know, YA, but there’s only so much repetition of “the girl with the wildfire eyes” one can take. What’s worse is that most of these moments didn’t have the textual evidence to back them up—I know that Quinn is the girl with the wildfire eyes, but Chan doesn’t even care to explain what that means. It wasn’t the best combination, but Chan’s writing is at a solid starting point.

All in all, an ambitious YA debut full of determination, spirit, and massive space whales. 3.75 stars!

The Celestial Seas appears to be a series, but no sequels have been announced. T.A. Chan is also the author of the adult novella One Last Game.

Today’s song:

goddamn, this might be my favorite led zeppelin 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 (8/4/26) – Wearing the Lion

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I was a huge fan of John Wiswell’s debut novel, Someone You Can Build a Nest In; it got a 4.5 star rating from me, and it’s one of the few books that I’ve been able to swallow my squeamishness for body horror for just because it was so lovely and heartfelt. Naturally, I wanted to read more of Wiswell’s books. I’m not usually one for Greek myth retellings (they’re saturating the market, we’ve had enough!!!), but I trusted Wiswell enough to pull it off. Unfortunately, Wearing the Lion had its moments, but turned out to be a Greek myth retelling that was sanitized in all the wrong places.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Wearing the Lion – John Wiswell

Hera has another son, and she despises him.

Born out of wedlock, her distant son Heracles proves to be stronger—and more devoted—than the average human. He thwarts every attempt by Hera to kill him, and grows up to have godlike strength. All he wants is for Hera to answer his prayers, but Hera wants nothing to do with him. But as Hera’s mounting, seemingly impossible challenges stack against him, endangering his family and relationships, Heracles wants answers. And he’ll do anything to find out why Hera doesn’t love him, despite all of his devotion to the mother he never met.

TW/CW: grief, child death, loss of loved ones, violence, birth/pregnancy, descriptions of injury, animal cruelty, war

To give you an idea of my experience reading Wearing the Lion, let’s consider the best scene in the book. It reminded me of why I loved John Wiswell’s debut, Someone You Can Build a Nest In. About a third of the way through the novel, Heracles wrestles the infamous Nemean lion. In the throes of battle, the lion’s claws pierce Heracles’s skin, and as they’re locked together, the pinprick of the claws remind Heracles of the embrace of his dead son, who was cursed by the gods to have lion-like features. It’s a harrowing scene. It’s written with such startling humanity, but it also works on its own as a kind of thesis for Wiswell’s interpretation of Heracles as a more empathetic hero who goes to the lengths he does because he fundamentally just wants love and is willing to find it in unexpected places. So he doesn’t kill the Nemean Lion, and it becomes his companion.

Then he names it Purrseus.

Wham. Just like that, all of the emotional impact gets deadened. It’s symptomatic of a larger problem with the novel, which is that the narrative voice was insufferable. The overwhelming feeling that I got was that it felt like the product of a millennial who watched Disney’s version of Hercules one too many times as a child. The narrative voice of both Hera, Heracles, and the other characters was in that overly “quirky” style that tries too hard to be witty by sprinkling in a weird mixture of terrible puns and improperly-placed swearing so that you know that it has a sense of humor, but it’s also adult! Ooh, I’m so edgy, here’s Hera calling Zeus her “dipshit husband” for the millionth time! (Not that the label wasn’t earned for Zeus, to be fair.) Heracles is the most precious cinnamon roll who must be protected at all costs! Why does the Hydra talk like they’re trapped in a Tumblr post circa 2012? It made me wonder if this was really the same author as Someone You Can Build a Nest In, because this writing style was nothing short of grating.

Unfortunately, my issues come back to Heracles being an alleged precious cinnamon roll who can do no wrong. “They woobified Heracles” is an unholy sentence that I wish that I never had to write, but it’s pretty much exactly what happened in Wearing the Lion. I’m not even that familiar with the original myth, but even here, I can see that this is an unnecessarily sanitized interpretation. In attempting to create a more sympathetic view of the character (not that his reputation was all that tarnished in the first place), Wiswell erased most of his flaws. He’s human, of course—Wiswell didn’t hold back in depicting Heracles in the throes of his grief—but every hint of a flaw that comes up is easily smoothed over. Any hint of wrongdoing on Heracles’s part got hastily justified in service of making him “sympathetic.” I’ll eat up found family any day of the week, but there was so little differentiation or conflict—even minor arguments—between Heracles and his motley crew. He just became a Disney Princess with a bunch of monsters following him through the woods on his wacky little quest. Effectively, he becomes exactly what Wiswell doesn’t want Heracles to be: infallible and perfect. It just made Wearing the Lion fundamentally less interesting, knowing that anything bad that Heracles did would inevitably not be his fault.

That being said, Wearing the Lion at least had the seeds of something good. Though it wasn’t executed as well as it could’ve been, I liked that it became a story of breaking the cycle of trauma; in Wiswell’s interpretation, both Hera and Heracles had been dually traumatized by their circumstances, but they were both entwined in a chain of hurt that, naturally, led back to Zeus sleeping around and not considering the consequences. Though overburdened by its grating voice, the manifestations of Hera and Heracles’s trauma were unique to them, and the ways that this trauma evolved and informed their characters was actually quite touching. Of course, it was wrapped up too neatly for my liking, but I kind of expected that from this novel. For all its flaws, Wearing the Lion set out to be a very human novel, and in some places, it succeeded.

All in all, a retelling of Greek mythology that sought to shed new light on its protagonist, but sanitized him instead. Without the Nemean Lion scene, I definitely would’ve rated it lower. 3.5 stars.

Wearing the Lion is a standalone, but John Wiswell is also the author of Someone You Can Build a Nest In and The Dragon Has Some Complaints.

Today’s song:

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (7/28/26) – The Language of Liars

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I discovered S.L. Huang through The Vela and The Water Outlaws, and I was intrigued enough by their writing to put The Language of Liars on my TBR. It was the most compelling premise I’d seen in any of their novels—and it quickly proved to be their best.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Language of Liars – S.L. Huang

The Star Eaters are the key to making sure that galactic civilization runs—they are the only species who can mine the element required for space travel. But so little is known about them—scientists haven’t been able to figure them out and linguists have not been able to decipher their language. The only way—or so Ro has been told—is to jump into their minds, inhabiting their bodies in order to pick apart their enigmatic existence. Ro has been assigned to jump into the mind of a Star Eater, and he carries a monumental amount of responsibility on his shoulders. But the more Ro figures out about the Star Eaters, the more he realizes that this mission was never about understanding, and that the sinister ulterior motives may spell a horrible fate for him and his team.

TW/CW: genocide, torture, imperialism/colonialism, slavery, police brutality, violence

TREAD LIGHTLY! This review contains spoilers, so if you haven’t read this novella and plan to, read at your own risk.

I’ve only read one full novel by S.L. Huang, but after reading The Language of Liars, I’m convinced that this is their best work yet. Few other novellas are able to pack so much top-notch worldbuilding, twists, and emotions into so few pages, but this one did. I’ve been thinking about it for days.

I enjoyed The Water Outlaws, but I wasn’t quite as invested in the story as I was with The Language of Liars. What carried over from that novel was Huang’s distinct writing style. They excel in extruding the raw emotion from the most minute, overlooked moments. Every little thing is important to Huang, and that made The Language of Liars into a truly unique novella. The care they put into each metaphor carried over to the care they put into each minor character. The inhospitable, alien world and all of its contradictory rules were written tensely—and intensely. I find myself thinking of Octavia Butler’s famous note to herself, where she vows to “make people FEEL, FEEL, FEEL!”; Huang certainly carries on Butler’s legacy in that regard—as well as their commitment to making anti-colonial sci-fi that truly makes you think.

The world of The Language of Liars is a truly intricate one, but Huang pulled off the exceedingly tricky feat of establishing it a) in less than 200 pages, and b) doing it without unwieldy chunks of exposition. Part of why I think Huang was so successful was because of the tidbits at the beginning of each chapter: passages from books, news segments, and quotes from fictional politicians all buttressed this world, making it feel real in the spaces between the narrative. Beyond that, Huang did an excellent job of not only pulling off this marvel of worldbuilding, but making it compelling. There’s a whole host of fascinating species, all with their own cultures and wars that the narrative is able to dip its toes into without derailing the plot. I especially loved all of the cultural quirks of Ro’s species, and the creature design in me loved how Huang went beyond “these aliens look like rabbits” to integrating rabbit-like behaviors into their language and culture.

I debated whether or not to reveal the big twist of The Language of Liars in this review because it knocked me off my feet and I don’t want to ruin that for other people. And yet, it’s so hard to discuss this novella without talking about it, and I desperately want to talk about it. As it turns out, this cutthroat social system of the Star Eaters is entirely a fabrication, and the reason that the Star Eaters’s culture is so enigmatic and unknowable is that it cannot be known—all of the remaining Star Eaters’s consciousnesses have been hijacked by other alien spies like Ro. It gutted me. The other civilizations were so desperate to “understand” (read: figure out so they could adequately exploit) the Star Eaters that they committed a mental genocide on the entire species, and everything about their culture that could’ve been discovered has been lost forever. It’s a seismic blast of a twist. And it makes such a potent point about the nature of imperialism and the history of anthropology and linguistics—sometimes, something as innocuous as attempting to understand another culture or language can quickly be turned into tools of exploitation and slavery. Though there was the faintest (faintest) glimmer of hope at the end, that haunting conclusion has stayed with me for weeks. Not only did I not see it coming, but the way that Huang executed it made everything fall into place horribly—it takes a hard left turn into psychological horror, in my opinion, but it’s the horror of imperialism.

The Language of Liars isn’t necessarily about disability, but Ro is hinted to be neurodivergent. I hesitate to put an exact name to it, as he’s an alien with entirely different physiology and brain chemistry. (That being said, some of the traits that Huang names are similar to autism, namely a difficulty grasping social cues and aversions to certain food textures.) However, I think a part of the twist that stood out to me is that the entire premise felt innately neurodivergent. Here you have Ro, who goes undercover into the mind of an alien creature to get to the bottom of their language and culture, and is shoved headfirst into a world of intricate, often contradictory social cues. Say the wrong thing, and you’ll be punished, and yet everybody else is unwilling to share what it is that makes words or phrases “wrong.” And as the twist tells us, this intricate, contradictory system of words is a house of cards that’s easily toppled: nobody knows what to do or what to say in the end, only that one wrong word could mean death. Everybody’s just performing normalcy, but it all falls apart at the drop of a hat. The Language of Liars felt so neurodivergent to me, and Ro’s journey of struggling to figure out this thankless construction of language hit home for me in more ways than one.

All in all, an inventive and haunting novella that packs a startling amount of power into less than 200 pages. 4.25 stars!

The Language of Liars is a standalone, but S.L. Huang is also the author of The Water Outlaws, the Cas Russell series (Zero Sum Game, Null Set, and Critical Point), and several other novels for adults.

Today’s song:

such a classic album—this is my favorite track, without a doubt

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (7/21/26) – Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I hate to say it, but while Amie Kaufman has never let me down with her books, her book recommendations are less reliable. That’s how I found out about Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous, but to be fair, I’ve been reading and enjoying Autumn K. England/M.K. England’s books since I was in high school. They’ve never been a favorite or auto-buy author for me, but their books have been consistently solid and enjoyable in a pinch. Unfortunately, their cozy adult debut is their weakest novel to date.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous – Autumn K. England

Oaklin Nettlewood is turning over a new leaf. After narrowly escaping from a magical cult, Oaklin has fled to the small town of Mossley’s Rest. In a fit of desperation, they buy a farm, not knowing that its former occupant was a beloved staple in the town before her death. Her ghost lingers in the barn, and she’s bent on helping Oaklin revive the farm in earnest. But between painful flashbacks, suspicious townsfolk, and Oaklin’s self-imposed barriers, will they ever be able to start over?

TW/CW: panic attacks, mental illness themes, past descriptions of murder/violence, substance abuse

I wasn’t a massive fan of England’s books before, but they were consistently entertaining, which is why I’ve kept reading them. This might be where I break up with them. I should’ve seen the red flags when this was compared to Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea, which I rated too generously in retrospect. Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous was largely bland, and when it wasn’t bland, it was grating; there are so many ways to make cozy genre fiction compelling, and England used none of them.

Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous did have a prominently good aspect; it’s not just a matter of “the main character is disabled/mentally ill and that’s cool,” but England’s depiction of Oaklin’s PTSD was so empathetic. England did an excellent job of writing all of the facets of Oaklin’s trauma and mental illness. No punches were pulled with the depictions of their violent flashbacks, and their frequent panic attacks and harshly critical inner monologue were treated with the appropriate balance of sympathy and authenticity—unlike some other parts of the book, none of it felt sanitized, which I appreciated. It didn’t just feel like representation for representation’s sake—it felt like a genuine attempt to humanize a mental illness that’s quite stigmatized.

I’m not sure if I was just able to pass over the flaws in England’s novels in high school because I wasn’t super discerning or if Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous is just their worst novel. Whatever the case, one of the biggest weaknesses of this novel was just how downright bland it is. I hate to say this, but I genuinely can’t think of a single unique quality that England’s writing has. There were a few nicely flowery metaphors here and there, but it just felt devoid of any individuality. The bucolic setting was described at the barest minimum, as were the relationships between Oaklin and the others. I wasn’t expecting a worldbuilding marvel, or anything, but any sense of the world beyond the absolute bare minimum was missing. England’s writing style was just exceedingly nothing. This was certainly a book. With words in it.

I was hoping that England’s characters and dialogue would pick up the slack that the boring writing left off. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Apart from Oaklin, who was decently written, and Granny (whose main distinguishing factors were that she was a ghost and had the mannerisms of an old lady), the supporting characters were lazy copy and pastes of each other. Looking back, the only thing that distinguished Lior from the others was that she was [checks notes] an attractive woman who had a different job from the others. Ryn and Jules were the exact same character. (I think one of them plays guitar? That’s all that distinguishes them.) But what really exacerbated this issue was that all of their dialogue sounded the same. To make matters worse, they all had these very modern, gratingly “quirky” mannerisms that felt like some insufferable person’s DnD campaign. For all the effort that England put into making the people of Mossley’s Rest seem like the kind of small town folk that you’d be comfortable being neighbors with, I just wanted to leave as soon as possible.

An extension of this character issue came in the form of the romance. I liked the setup of Oaklin and Lior’s relationship, but none of it felt earned. From the start, I knew that they would end up together. That in and of itself wasn’t the problem; the problem was that their romantic progression felt so fast and unearned. So much of how their relationship developed fell into the many timeskips throughout the novel, leaving what we had on the page insufficient. It just lacked tension. In cozy genre fiction of any kind, romance is a great way to introduce an element of low-stakes tension without making the novel overly tense. Here, it was just insta-love, and wholly unearned. The only real barriers were Oaklin’s past identity and their conflicting professions, both of which got smoothed over pretty quickly. I do like that Lior was able to accept Oaklin in spite of their past, but it just felt like it robbed the book of some fluffier tension that it very much needed.

That being said, I will say that, in spite of not enjoying myself throughout most of Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous, I did love the ending. It’s messier than a lot of cozy fantasies like it are willing to get, and the biggest takeaway is that Oaklin is fundamentally deserving of love in spite of their past, which they had no control over. Yes, it was a little sappy, but I always appreciate narratives about the harsh criticism that characters have about themselves being proven wrong. England stuck the landing, but it wasn’t enough to save the whole novel.

All in all, a cozy fantasy that was forgettable in all senses of the word. 2.25 stars.

Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous is the first novel in the Everyday Magic series, but no sequels have been announced yet. Autumn K. England (also writing as M.K. England) is also the author of several other books for teens and adults, including The Disasters, Spellhacker, Roll for Love, All Fired Up, and many others.

Today’s song:

NEW CHELSEA WOLFE ALBUM IN AUGUST, THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

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

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

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

Enjoy this week’s review!

Machine (White Space, #2) – Elizabeth Bear

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today’s song:

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

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (6/23/26) – Heaven’s Graveyard

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

After my Idolfire freakout last week, I knew I had to get my hands on Heaven’s Graveyard as soon as I could. I put it on hold, but mercifully, it came in way sooner than I thought! YIPPEEEE!! It wasn’t as enchanting as Idolfire, but those are huge shoes to fill—Heaven’s Graveyard is still a cut above the rest.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Heaven’s Graveyard – Grace Curtis

Coda Callanuny has thrown herself into her university work. A student of archaeology, she’s been bent on solving a mystery that she’s been chasing since childhood: proving that Aleya, a figure of myth, was a real person and not a fairytale. But when a beloved professor—the only one who believes her theory—suddenly turns up dead, her chase for history becomes a chase for a murderer. It turns out that her professor’s findings could change the world, and in the wrong hands, could spell disaster. With the knowledge of a sunken, magical city in ruins, Cod must fight to protect the secrets that governments could kill for—and to protect the ones she loves.

TW/CW: murder, violence, misogyny, descriptions of injury, war themes, religious bigotry (fictional) animal cruelty, toxic relationship

First off, can we stop to appreciate how gorgeous the cover is? Aled Thompson’s artwork is truly stunning.

There. Have you taken sufficient appreciation time? Very well, onto the review…

Once again—like Idolfire, which was billed as science fantasy for…reasons, I guess, Heaven’s Graveyard isn’t science fantasy either. I’d put it more in speculative fiction or fantasy, since this is a fantastical setting and magic exists, but said magic doesn’t play a central role; there also isn’t enough “new” technology to qualify as sci-fi. But enough about my ramblings about genre misclassification and mismarketing, let’s get into how excellent Heaven’s Graveyard is!

With Heaven’s Graveyard, Curtis proves that she is a master of worldbuilding. Watching the more archaic world in Idolfire transform into something semi-modern was a fascinating feat. In terms of technology, I’d say we’re somewhere at the equivalent of the 1900’s-1930’s (radios, fantasy forms of high-speed transportation, fairly advanced warfare methods, etc.); aside from being a breath of fresh air in a genre where medieval and Victorian settings reign supreme, it was planned out so meticulously. Between the explorations of politics, education, and religion, it felt as vibrant and real as Curtis’s other worlds. I particularly liked how Curtis explored the rise of the new Procumbent religion, and how it had come to dominate much of the world and how it seeped into said politics and education. Stepping into Heaven’s Graveyard felt like I’d gotten a ticket to visit this world, which is a must for good genre fiction!

As always, Curtis’s characters shone in Heaven’s Graveyard. The central characters lacked some of the oomph that made Idolfire stick with me—I loved Coda (and Sparrow was despicable, but excellently-written as a manipulative but charming prick), but she lacked the pull that Aleya and Kirby had on me. I think part of it was just that kind of grand, mythic arc that they had wasn’t present here, and although Cod’s arc was emotional, it didn’t move me nearly as much as the former’s. Granted, I knew going in that it wasn’t going to be the same, but I just feel like the full effects of Cod and Sparrow’s disastrous relationship were glossed over, to the point where it almost felt like an afterthought. Thal grew on me much more than I expected, and I loved the relationship that she and Cod had towards the end. Like Idolfire, all of the kooky side characters felt so real and made the world feel so much more lived-in, and every glimpse made the world so delightfully human.

Like Idolfire, Heaven’s Graveyard excels at the balancing act of pairing humor with darkness. In this case, it applied to the murder mystery side of the plot. In spite of the murder of one of Cod’s beloved mentors, Curtis’s take on mystery was surprisingly funny. Most of that came from the fact that, in the first half of the novel, the main obstacle that Cod faced was the infinite layers of bureaucracy from the university and her colleagues thinking that she’s gone nuts. Yet Curtis maintains the stakes—both external and personal—involved in the mystery. I loved the first reveal about Nivela, and I loved how it tied into how this novel examined how history and historical discoveries are often manipulated for political gain. There’s a thematic thread from Idolfire about revelations that could shatter the carefully maintained foundation that a country/empire/etc. has built for itself that I appreciated. Fast-paced and full of mystery, Curtis’s blend of genres was a success.

It’s clear that Heaven’s Graveyard comes from a deep passion for archaeology and history. On the surface level, I loved Curtis’s depiction of historians and academia, from Cod’s relentless search for the truth to the bureaucratic hoops that she has to endure, even in a fantasy world. Cod’s quest to prove that Aleya was real formed the core of her character, but I loved how it tied into her character arc and Curtis’s exploration of history and obsession. Cod’s quest becomes one that blurs the boundaries of genuine desire to uncover history and her own ego, and I loved the nuance that Curtis afforded it. It also provided a timely commentary on how we often feel the need to push aside the wishes of other people and cultures in the pursuit of knowledge, and without spoiling anything, I love how Cod comes to the realization that she does. It shows not just a deep reverence for archaeology and historians, but a love for the people whose bones that this history once belonged to.

All in all, a masterful blend of fantasy, speculative fiction, and mystery that made every page worth the ride. 4.25 stars!

Heaven’s Graveyard is a companion novel to Idolfire, which is set 2,000 years before this story in the same universe; however, according to Curtis, they can be read separately from each other. Grace Curtis is also the author of Floating Hotel and Frontier.

Today’s song:

today’s oddly specific song fragment that I love: the way that tom waits says the word “mackerel”

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