Tag: Sapphic

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (4/8/25) – You Sexy Thing

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I’ll skip the prologue about how predictable it is that I picked up another queer space opera, and one with a ’70s music reference in the title at that. (SING IT WITH ME!! 🎶I BE-LIEVE IN MIRACLES—🎶) Nonetheless, I kept my expectations low, and I’m glad I did. Hilarious, heartbreaking, and heartwarming all at once, You Sexy Thing is the start of a true joy of a space opera trilogy!

Enjoy this week’s review!

You Sexy Thing – Cat Rambo

It’s been decades since Niko Larson and her fellow soldiers were able to break free of the Grand Military of the Hive Mind, where they were voiceless pawns in a never-ending war. Now, they run the Last Chance, a humble restaurant at the edge of TwiceFar Station, serving customers from all over the galaxy and from all walks of life. But when a mysterious, sentient ship destroys their livelihood before giving them a mysterious mission that they can’t refuse, Niko and her fellow chefs and restaurateurs must return to the fray they tried so desperately to escape—all with the heir to the Paxian Empire in tow.

TW/CW: sexual content, violence, blood, torture, kidnapping/imprisonment, war themes, abuse, genocide themes, death

The entire time I was reading this book, I’d click on the Kindle cover and I’d immediately start hearing “You Sexy Thing.” It just kept coming back, like I was trapped in a sitcom gag with a signature musical cue. Probably the intended effect. Not complaining, though. Absolute banger.

What an excellent space opera this was! You Sexy Thing scratched so many of my favorite sci-fi itches, and one of the biggest ones was the aliens and creatures! CREATURES! CREATURES! I’d place You Sexy Thing as bordering on space fantasy, though I won’t go into a whole digression on what counts/doesn’t count as sci-fi or SF; that was mainly because of the ghosts, some magic use, and were-creatures. However, Rambo did an excellent job with all of the alien denizens of this galaxy! There was a fantastic balance of humanoid and more unfamiliar creatures, all of whom were delightful. Skidoo was a personal favorite, as I’m particularly fond of any kind of cephalopod-inspired aliens, but Petalia, even if their name was rather on-the-nose (in line with a lot of the humor of the book), had some fascinating details about their culture and plant-based physiology. Also, there’s a chimp. Gotta have a chimp to round out the crew, amirite? Thankfully, this one doesn’t go the way of Nope, and Gio is a perfectly reasonable individual. There’s also lots of casual queerness abound, which is always a plus.

Another thing I love in space opera is a good motley crew, and You Sexy Thing had a stellar one! Rambo’s choice (apparently a challenge from fellow sci-fi author Ann Leckie, if the epigraph is anything to go by) to have You Sexy Thing in an omniscient, third-person POV was a great solution for covering the thoughts of all of the characters, discarding the need for separate chapters for everyone. All of them had distinct and lovable (mostly) personalities that made them butt heads with some characters and mesh with others, while still retaining a sense of familial bonding. Even outside of the restaurant setting, they retained a hilarious rapport that was a joy to read. Dabry’s musings on cooking were a delight, Atlanta’s trouble fitting in with the crew made for some lovely interactions, and Niko’s continuous struggles to face her past made for some of the novel’s most emotional points. You Sexy Thing balanced levity with emotional weight to great effect, and had a fantastic cast of characters to split the difference.

Amidst all of the humor, You Sexy Thing explores some quite complex, nuanced emotion, which I appreciated. I don’t think Rambo fully explored the implications of everything that had been done to Petalia, and how returning to Niko’s company affected them, but what we got was appropriately complicated, messy, and painful to read—exactly how it should have been, given the circumstances. This story never strays away from the cross-cultural complications of relationships, grief, and more, which added to how fleshed-out and unique all of the characters felt. By the end, all of the betrayals were appropriately punches to the gut, but ones that were cushioned by the found family dynamic that had been built up by the end.

Like the characters, the worldbuilding was an absolute treat! I will say, some of it was rather scattershot—we frequently get references to alien species and places that don’t even show up after they’re mentioned, but since this is a trilogy, I might be able to get past that, assuming that they come up later. I’m mostly accepting it, knowing that a) this is a huge galaxy, and b) that the world will presumably be expanded upon. It only really peeved me when they failed to explain much about what said alien races looked like. Other than that, Rambo’s worldbuilding was fascinating to pick apart! Sometimes, individual concepts are more interesting than the whole, and that aspect was made manifest by many of Rambo’s concepts, from married couples (or friends) being able to meld into a single being to the biotechnology that made You Sexy Thing (the sentient ship) possible. Through it all, I got the sense that Rambo’s galaxy was a distinctly lived-in one, which made my reading experience all the better.

My only real complaint, if any, was Tubal Last. You Sexy Thing had moments of being purposely cheesy, from the in-your-face ’70s music references to the on-the-nose character names; the latter felt like a nice, tongue-in-cheek reference to some of the characteristics of older sci-fi. That quality extended to the villain, who was cartoonishly evil. I don’t necessarily mind a comically evil villain every now and then, but in contrast to the complexity and nuance of many of the characters, Tubal Last felt out of place, just another obstacle (a formidable one, but a very one-note one) for the crew to overcome. He was over-the-top, but not in a way that necessarily served the story, other than some slightly unique motivations.

Overall, You Sexy Thing was a blast from start to finish, with a lively, energetic galaxy and a cast of lovable characters and daring hijinks to fill it with. 4.5 stars!

You Sexy Thing is the first book in Cat Rambo’s Disco Space Opera series, followed by Devil’s Gun and Rumor Has It. They are also the author of Neither Here Nor There, the Tabat Quartet (Beasts of Tabat, Hearts of Tabat, and Exiles of Tabat), And the Last Trump Shall Sound (with Harry Turtledove and James Morrow), and many other full-length works and short stories. Rambo is also the former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).

Today’s song:

it’s taken me this long to finally listen to Jimmy’s Show all the way through…preparing for Jimmy’s Show 2? either way, it’s an absolute delight.

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 (1/28/25) – The Marble Queen

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Graphic novels haven’t been all I’ve been reading this month, but I’ve certainly been on a kick of reviewing them. Unfortunately, this one wasn’t nearly as good as The Infinity Particle, but it’s apples and oranges to compare them. I really need to stop putting everything with “sapphic” and “fantasy” in the description on my TBR, because while I love those two things together, they aren’t automatically the recipe for a good book. Sadly, The Marble Queen is proof of that.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Marble Queen – Anna Kopp and Gabrielle Kari

Princess Amelia lives in a kingdom in turmoil. Accosted on all sides by pirates and on the brink of war between its neighboring nations, Marion is on the verge of collapse. Only a miracle can save it—and that miracle may be to marry Amelia off to the prince of the neighboring kingdom of Iliad. But soon, she finds out that there was a mistake—it was not the prince she is being married off to, but the new queen, the stunning Salira. Stuck in a foreign kingdom with no control over her destiny, Amelia searches for answers. But with political forces from all sides conspiring against them, she must ally with Salira in order to save both of their kingdoms from ruin.

art by Gabrielle Kari

TW/CW: blood, violence, loss of loved ones, anxiety, poisoning (attempted)

I went into this graphic novel thinking I’d get a sapphic fantasy. The sapphics? They’re here. The fantasy? Not so much. The writing and artwork? The latter picked up some of the slack left by the rushed writing, but not enough. Given more page time and refinement, The Marble Queen could have been something promising, but it was clearly a case of too many plot ideas in a shell that could not hold all of them.

If you’re looking for fantasy, The Marble Queen will likely disappoint. If you’re looking for something more along the lines of a regency romance with political intrigue thrown in, you might be more satisfied. The Marble Queen has plenty of ballroom dancing, flowy dresses, court intrigue, and pirates, but nothing that would necessarily separate it from something in our history. There was a vague, throwaway sequence about some crystals beneath Iliad that supposedly had magical powers, but it ended up having zero consequence to the plot—it felt like Kopp threw it in just so that she could say “See? See? This is fantasy, we promise!” Also, so many of the place names felt so randomly plucked and too close to real world things—kingdoms called Marion (not necessarily a common name, but similar enough to Marianne/Maryanne that it loses the fantastical feel) and Iliad (I don’t think I have to explain that one) made the worldbuilding feel even lazier. The Marble Queen’s artwork also had a lack of immersion—other than the glimpses we got of the palace and the outside world, many of the characters were shown on flat, monochrome backgrounds, making it difficult to get a full picture of the world. Had this been historical fiction with a loose basis in some of our cultures, it might have been more effective.

Additionally, The Marble Queen was all over the place in terms of plot. I got the impression that Kopp and Kari had a plethora of ideas for what to do with the story, but not nearly enough time to execute them. As a result, every subplot felt smushed together like sardines in a tin can—so many of them were there, and yet almost none of them had room for proper mobility. I was particularly intrigued by Amelia’s anxiety and her feelings of isolation in Iliad. Her fear and alienation, although given a fair amount of space in the first half of the novel, had the potential to be poignant, but since it was shoved in unceremoniously against at least six other subplots, it had to room to grow into a compelling, sensitive story. The same went for the political intrigue—I liked it in concept, but the plot with Stefan had so little room to develop that by the time the reveal came, I’d guessed it about 30 pages earlier. In between all this, we get rapid-fire scenes of training montages, poisoning attempts, emotional backstory with not nearly enough grace given to the grief they should have held, said random bit about magical crystals that doesn’t end up being relevant at all, and a pirate that was clearly supposed to be a “fan favorite” character, but only got about 5 pages of character interactions tops. Given more polishing, The Marble Queen could have been a successful story, but it had no sense of direction, which made me struggle to keep my interest in the characters.

Said plot, more overstuffed than a Thanksgiving turkey, is why I think the romance didn’t work for me either. I did get that the arrangement was meant to be rushed, but when so many extraneous plot events were happening around Amelia and Salira, I never bought the chemistry that Kopp so badly wanted to convince the reader that existed between them. We’re supposed to believe that Amelia and Salira are slowly falling in love, but there’s hardly any indication in the dialogue that a connection is being made, save for a heavy dose of panels of Amelia with sparkly eyes and anime blushing. We’re supposed to sympathize with Salira because of the untimely death of her first girlfriend, but we hardly get an indication that she’s uncomfortable during the wedding, and after the explanation to Amelia, she comforts her, and then they make out in front of a painting of her ex-girlfriend and move on. Again, this was a victim of The Marble Queen‘s full-to-bursting plot—a romance that could have been compelling was ruined by a plot that moved too fast and contained too much of the wrong things.

The art was…alright, I suppose. That gorgeous cover set my expectations too high. I could get on board with the almost-Manga art style, and I did enjoy some of the expressions that the characters made. Although the color palette was warm and pleasant, it was largely flat—there was a significant lack of shading and depth, which can sometimes work, but in a story and world this fantastical, some of it was necessary. Additionally, Kari had a tendency to overexplain some of the gestures of the characters. Instead of having some creative (and sometimes silly) depictions of sound effects, there were direct writings of, say, “rise,” “kneel,” or “stab” when characters stood up, knelt or got stabbed, or repetitions of “beautiful” when Amelia first sees Salira. In moderation, some of this could have worked, but in such large amounts (and in places where these things could have easily been inferred by…well, just looking at the artwork), they grated on me.

That being said, I loved Gabrielle Kari’s character designs! She did an excellent job of making the characters expressive and distinctive in their respective looks. Anime blushing aside (I could let it slide after a while), all of the characters had wonderful stylistic quirks and tells, making them fun to follow around their kingdom, even when the writing itself slacked off. The design language wasn’t just clear, but enjoyable to see between the kingdoms; I loved the contrast of Amelia’s flowing, flouncy dresses in contrast to the tighter, more soldierly attire of the royals of Iliad. It added what some of the writing failed to add with the themes of her alienation and isolation—she was clearly an outsider, in both her foreign mannerisms and personality and the way she stuck out in the crowd.

All in all, a fantasy (?) graphic novel with the potential for epic drama, but got dragged down by an overstuffed plot that squeezed the life out of the characters. 2 stars.

The Marble Queen is a standalone, but Anna Kopp is also the author of Lifeblood, as well as many Minecraft novels for younger readers. Gabrielle Kari is also the illustrator of No Holds Bard, written by Eric Gladstone.

Today’s song:

NEW TUNDE ADEBIMPE IN APRIL, LET’S GOOOOOOOOOO

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (11/26/24) – Countess

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

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

Enjoy this week’s review!

Countess – Suzan Palumbo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today’s song:

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

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (9/24/24) – Some Girls Do

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

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

Enjoy this week’s review!

Some Girls Do – Jennifer Dugan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today’s song:

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

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (9/10/24) – The Sun and the Void

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Looks like I’m back! I’ve returned to college, and, as it always does, it has taken me some time to settle in. My ducks aren’t fully in a row, but they’re straightened enough that I’ve figured out when and where I’ll have times to squeeze in some writing. Key word is some: chances are I’ll stick to the two posts a week for a while now that I’ve got lots of schoolwork on my hands.

For this week’s Book Review Tuesday, I have a book that it’s almost miraculous that I liked as much as I did; at their worst, overly long epic fantasy novels are the bane of my existence. The Sun and the Void clocks in at nearly 600 pages, and I expected at least some of it to be a slog. Lo and behold, this novel held so much more in store—vibrant characters, Venezuelan-inspired mythology, and a daring quest across an inhospitable land.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Sun and the Void (The Warring Gods, #1) – Gabriela Romero Lacruz

Reina has lived her life on the outskirts of society. Though her kind, the nozariels, have won their freedom, her tail and features mark her as an outcast. Reina returns to her estranged grandmother in dire need of healing—and answers. Now kept alive by means of dark, unpredictable magic, she is now the owner of a terrible secret: her grandmother is in league with a demon-god hungry for sacrifices, and one such sacrifice may be someone that she holds dear.

On the other side of the kingdom, Eva struggles to hide her true self. Her mixed heritage—part human, part valco—makes her a target. Soon after she is set to be married off to a man she barely knows, she falls in with a revolutionary. But this charming, volatile man has a darker side, a hunger for power that will not spare her if she stands in the way.

The paths of these women intersect as the clock ticks, and the fate of both of their worlds may hang in the balance…

TW/CW (from the author): alcohol, assault, blood, child death, childbirth, death, demons, emotional abuse, gore, infertility, kidnapping, pregnancy, racism, religion, sexually explicit scenes, mentions of slavery, violence

Ever since my tastes started drifting more into adult novels, I’ve had a history of getting a hundreds or so pages into an epic fantasy novel, losing my way, and coming out with only the vaguest sense of plot and one character. There’s some of it that’s on me, but it’s often a case of rambling; I’ve found many such novels to be more wordy than necessary and convoluted in their delivery of the worldbuilding. I lowered my expectations for The Sun and the Void for this very reason, though I clung onto it because of the promise of the Venezuelan and Colombian-inspired setting and anticolonial storyline (!!!!!!!!!!!!). Beyond being sick of generic, catch-all European settings in fantasy, my half-Colombian Spidey sense was tingling…and for good reason! The Sun and the Void is an overlooked gem of epic fantasy, with magic and action abound.

The vibrant setting that Romero Lacruz crafts was the clear star of The Sun and the Void. Her South American-inspired landscape was a breath of fresh air in a sea of vaguely European epic fantasies, breathing some much-needed life and diversity into the genre. Logistically, this region of South America—Venezuela and Colombia—also provides a variety of biomes to play with: we get flashes of deserts, forests, and glittering, tropical beaches, all with a fantastical dash of demons and monsters. That alone would have already put it a step above your average epic fantasy, but it was this series’ unique fantasy races that truly shone! As metaphors for oppression and who the dominant power in society deems “acceptable,” the nozariels and valcos were effective on that front. Their designs, however, were what made them so fun, making for memorable characters in looks and culture as well as personality.

In my experience, there are certain brands of epic fantasy that are allergic to accessible writing. When I say accessible, I don’t mean simple; accessible doesn’t mean the absence of artful prose or clever metaphor. For me, accessible prose is inventive, but not so caught up in making itself sound clever that it becomes a chore to read. Romero Lacruz’s writing is a fantastic case study in how to hit the balance between artful and digestible. Every action scene, political machination, and argument is rendered in ways that do feel like how people talk, and yet she never forgets to season her prose with unique metaphors and descriptors of the characters and their surroundings that keep you hooked—or, in my case, vigorously highlighting on my Kindle. At no point did the writing feel pompous or overly convinced of its own talent—it’s writing for writing’s taste, which is what writing should be.

Power dynamics were at the forefront of The Sun and the Void, and the explorations of them were some of the most impactful parts of the novel. Through the side characters, Romero Lacruz portrays the different way that power manifests itself in people; no matter how “noble” their causes, characters like Doña Ursulina and Javier became so obsessed with achieving their goals that it subtly began to eclipse all else. What was unique about The Sun and the Void, however, was how it was framed: through the eyes of vulnerable, sensitive women that get pulled under their spells. Such abusive dynamics meant that Reina and Eva were respectively drawn into the web of these other characters. At no point were they helpless—they were victim to people that promised them healing or freedom, and became so entangled in the schemes of others that they had to fight tooth and claw to find their way back to the light.

That being said, the weakest links in The Sun and the Void lay in the worldbuilding. Even though this novel is one of the few lengthy epic fantasies that I’ve read that miraculously doesn’t get overly convoluted, the price it paid was that some of the worldbuilding was left messy and sloppy once I took a closer look. The glossary was helpful, but it took quite a while to get used to some of the intricacies of the magic system. Terms are thrown around in a very slipshod way, and instead of the dreaded page-long block of worldbuilding exposition, we get…a few sentences, at most, before said facet of the magic system is barely mentioned for the rest of the novel. It’s an issue with followthrough—once something was mentioned, it often took 300 pages for it to make a brief appearance, only to poof back into the unexplained ether. It’s clear that there was a lot of thought behind the worldbuilding, but the issue was more of following the time-honored rule of Chekhov’s gun—Chekhov’s magic system, in this case. The gun did go off in the end, but it took so long to get to that moment that I completely forgot the significance of it being there in the first place.

All in all, an epic fantasy that defied the conventions of the genre—setting, writing style, and more—in all of the best ways. 4 stars!

The Sun and the Void is the first novel in the Warring Gods series, followed by The River and the Star, which is slated for release in 2025. The Sun and the Void is Romero Lacruz’s debut novel.

Today’s song:

BLESSED WITH ANOTHER NEW SOCCER MOMMY TRACK AND A NORTH AMERICAN TOUR NEXT YEAR!!!!!

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 (6/17/24) – Floating Hotel

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Old news: I’m desperate for good cozy sci-fi, and most of that desperation comes from the fact that nobody does it like Becky Chambers, but publishers will slap “perfect for Becky Chambers fans!” on literally any sci-fi book with a hint of several people crammed on a ship. It has to stop. Floating Hotel looked like it might actually live up to those expectations, but I was hesitant because I didn’t enjoy Grace Curtis’ debut, Frontier. But I’m glad I gave Floating Hotel a chance, because it was just what I needed!

Enjoy this week’s review!

Floating Hotel – Grace Curtis

The Grand Abeona Hotel knows no borders, no political affiliations, and no galaxy or planet to call home. But for many, the Grand Abeona is their home away from home—a safe haven where nobody cares who you are and why you’re here. Run by Carl, the aging manager who first came to the hotel as a stowaway, the Grand Abeona is home to a vibrant cast of characters, all of whom will have paths that will unexpectedly intersect. And as small mysteries begin piling up in the far corners of the Grand Abeona, Carl and the hotel’s misfit staff must pull the pieces together before the hotel itself is put in harm’s way.

TW/CW: death, torture (both offscreen), verbal abuse

In retrospect, there’s really no better book that I could have read on my Kindle, which has the Grand Budapest Hotel on the case. Some things were just meant to be.

I doubt anyone will ever top Becky Chambers in terms of cozy sci-fi, but Grace Curtis comes close—and that’s exactly why I’m so glad that I gave her another chance. Though it’s not without its mystery and relatively high-stakes subplots, Floating Hotel is a cup of tea for the soul: quiet, observant, and downright warm and charming.

My main issue with Frontier was that it promised action, but delivered next to nothing; it’s not that I don’t like books without action, but when your book’s tagline is “love, loss, and laser guns,” you kind of…have to deliver there, no? After reading Floating Hotel, it’s clear that quieter, cozy sci-fi is what Curtis was meant to write; aside from the rebellion subplot, which was relatively under-the-radar and wasn’t a major issue until the last 20% of the novel, this novel had comfortably low stakes. Although there was a fair amount of turmoil in the empire established in the world of Floating Hotel, you really do feel like the Grand Abeona is a safe haven from all of the ills of the galaxy. There, nobody cares who you are, so long as you have a story to tell.

Another issue with Frontier was that, with all of the characters and subplots it juggled, a lot of the plot points blended together, giving the reader little time to connect with anybody. If my leap from Frontier’s 2-star rating to my 4-star rating of Floating Hotel wasn’t indication enough, Curtis has significantly improved on that aspect of her writing in the space between the two novels! This novel similarly juggles a multitude of characters—many of whom only get one chapter in the vast sea of POVs—but all of them have a unique place in the story. None of the backstories or motivations felt forced, and all of them connected back to how the Grand Abeona has healed them as people; through all of their eyes, whether it’s a waitress, a piano player, or a professor visiting for a conference, you can see just how important of the Grand Abeona is as a safe haven. Floating Hotel is one of the few books with more than 10 (I think?) POVs that has truly worked for me, and it’s a combination of really being able to connect each one to the hotel and its story, and it incorporates other characters organically before we even get their POVs—the interconnectedness was so smooth that I didn’t mind the massive amount of voices displayed.

Curtis clearly understands the cozy part of cozy sci-fi that so many people who market books as “cozy” never seem to get—the near absence of stakes. For the majority of the novel, it’s a very down-to-earth, slice-of-life kind of plot where all of the mysteries are more humorous than troubling; I mean, one of the main subplots of the first half of the novel is trying to find the culprit of an anonymous admirer leaving love letters in the lobby index. And I ate it up. It’s just so gentle!! Is the fate of the galaxy at stake? Absolutely not! The hotel staff is just getting together once a week to watch terrible movies for nostalgia’s sake!! Peak cozy sci-fi right here, folks!! There are queer and disabled characters abound (WOOHOO!!), but neither homophobia nor ableism are plot points at all! They’re just going about their lives!! This is the stuff!!

What both Curtis and Becky Chambers get right about cozy sci-fi as well is that cozy doesn’t necessarily equal apolitical. In the background, there’s plenty of discussions of imperialism with the tyrannical empire crawling with shady cloning and nepotism (take a guess at how those two things tie together…). Curtis isn’t afraid to take stabs at capitalism, environmental destruction, xenophobia (I love the subplot about the empire banning media about aliens because it would compromise the perceived superiority of the human race), and so much more over the course of the novel, and it elevates it exponentially. It emphasizes another truth (for me, at least) about cozy sci-fi, and being a gentle person in general—cozy or quiet does not equal docile or unwilling to speak out about injustice. To quote IDLES, another bastion of kindness: “Ain’t no doormats here/It doesn’t mean you have to bow, or say “Your Highness”/Just kill ’em with kindness.”

All in all, a gentle and masterful piece of cozy sci-fi, and a marked improvement from Grace Curtis’ debut. Consider my faith in her writing restored! 4 stars!

Floating Hotel is a standalone, but Grace Curtis is also the author of Frontier.

Today’s song:

am I ashamed of listening to this on repeat while writing the third book in my sci-fi trilogy? absolutely not.

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

Posted in Books

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️The Bookish Mutant’s Books for Pride Month (2024 Edition) 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Wednesday, bibliophiles!

Here in the U.S., June is Pride Month! And every month, I find myself having a downer of an introduction, just because the world only gets kinder to queer people in the smallest increments, it seems. The vocal minority in this country are still bent on erasing all evidence that queer people exist in the first place, like an offending stain on a white tablecloth. (A note to homophobes: has it ever occurred to you that you don’t have to look at pride flags or queer couples? You can just look away and not make it anybody else’s problem…life is so short, man.) But our community is one characterized by resilience: no amount of book bans, culture wars, or bigotry will wipe us off the map. We are are here, we have always been here, and we will always be here. Nothing you do will make us disappear. Don’t let the vocal minority distract you from the beauty created and progress made by our community.

So once again, here’s a list of YA and Adult books with queer characters and themes, curated by your local bisexual. I also added the specific representation of each book.

Just a refresher on my key:

MC: Main character

LI: Love interest

SC: Side character(s)

For my previous lists, see below:

Enjoy these book recs!

🌈THE BOOKISH MUTANT’S BOOKS FOR PRIDE MONTH (2024 EDITION)🌈

FANTASY

SCIENCE FICTION

REALISTIC FICTION:

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and if so, did you enjoy them? What are some of your favorite queer books that you’ve read in the last year? Let me know in the comments!

Today’s song:

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

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

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

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

Enjoy this week’s review!

Off With Their Heads – Zoe Hana Mikuta

Wonderland is full of monsters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today’s song:

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (3/26/24) – The Cybernetic Tea Shop

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

There’s a special place in my heart dedicated to cozy sci-fi, but the sad thing about it is that hardly anybody does it well save for Becky Chambers. I guess it’s hard to reach the bar when it’s been set astronomically high (no pun intended), but I will still read any cozy sci-fi that comes my way, despite the amount of times that the blurb “for fans of Becky Chambers!” has severely led me astray. However, in the midst of my reading slump, The Cybernetic Tea Shop was the perfect novella to tide me over and lift my spirits.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Cybernetic Tea Shop – Meredith Katz

After the death of her master, Sal, an autonomous robot operating outside of the laws of a futuristic America, runs the tea shop that her master founded. For hundreds of years, she has run it like a well-oiled machine, but something in her program seeks something more. When Clara, an AI technician struggling to make ends meet, walks into Sal’s tea shop by chance, they have an instant spark of friendship—and perhaps even something more. Is Clara what Sal needed all along, and is Sal the key to the similarly vacant space in Clara’s heart?

TW/CW: loss of loved ones (past)/discussions of grief, hate crimes/discrimination (sci-fi)

Since about 2021, I’ve lost count of the amount of times that the tagline “for fans of Becky Chambers!” has let me down. Nobody does cozy sci-fi like her; all of the times I’ve read books with that promise, you get some semblance of found family (which comes off rather forced, in the worst instances), but it often lacks the quiet, tender moments that put the cozy prefix in. However, in that respect, I’m glad to say that The Cybernetic Tea Shop wasn’t a letdown—not without its flaws, for sure, but more than enough to scratch my never-ending cozy sci-fi itch.

I’ve been in a very novella-centered headspace for months, given that I’m trying to write one for class and I’ve been studying how they work for said class as well. One of the foremost concerns we’ve been talking about is how much worldbuilding you can fit into such a small space—often 100 pages or less. The key, I’ve learned, is, after giving your reader the necessary context to make the world feel real, is to only expand on the parts that are essential to understanding the circumstances of your characters. Katz did an excellent job of establishing this kind of worldbuilding, and it speaks to what a novella can achieve in such a small page count! Inevitably, I found myself wanting more of the futuristic American setting that Katz built, but the context we get is only what we need to understand Sal: the creation of intelligent robots, the outlawing of said robots because of ethical complications with intelligence, and the discrimination and illegality of robots in the centuries since. It’s the perfect foundation to set up not just the world, but the conflicts that these characters encounter.

Cozy sci-fi, by nature, often keeps things small; a handful of characters, a singular setting, and all else happening in the background. Novellas, also by nature, typically scale it down as well. The Cybernetic Tea Shop only centers around two characters, but that’s all it really needs; this novella is small in every aspect, and that’s why it largely succeeded. By narrowing down two characters (and their budding romance) and a single, unique setting, Katz confined her world to reasonable limits to explore in a novella; nothing ever felt too convoluted or too large to fit into just over 100 pages, but it didn’t feel too sparse, either. Similarly, aside from the character-driven focus (also the backbone of cozy sci-fi), there’s hardly any plot points, and that was actually a strength of The Cybernetic Tea Shop—in terms of structure, it was practically a Goldilocks of novellas.

However, although the general craft of the novella was commendable, the writing left a lot to be desired. For such a fascinating world and two characters moving through it in a unique way, I wanted so much more from the writing. The prose was rather bare-bones, doing the bare minimum to describe a setting or situation. I wanted so many more descriptions—and genuinely interesting descriptions— of Sal’s tea shop; you can do so many fun things with a tea shop, but I hardly got a sense for what it looked like, what it smelled like, or any other kind of sensory details. Similarly, the dialogue, although it had moments of being sweet, was often bland and stiff, and felt transactional in terms of the prose—just a way to get from point A to point B. Given that the romance between Clara and Sal was what eventually drove the novella, transactional dialogue is the exact opposite of what The Cybernetic Tea Shop needed; the kind of romance that Katz was shooting for wanted to be anything but transactional, but ended up falling flat.

In addition, I found myself wanting more from the characters. Again: cozy sci-fi is a heavily character-driven subgenre, and the evolving relationships between the characters are what make the plot go forward, and not necessarily outside conflict. I did like that Katz only zoomed in on Clara and Sal, but I almost wish that the novella had been all from Sal’s perspective. We get a very detailed and nuanced vision of Sal’s character, from her grieving her long-dead master to her insecurities and fears about being in hiding as an autonomous robot. Clara, on the other hand, was given very little of the same treatment; I would have liked to have seen her have some kind of romantic hurdle to overcome—commitment issues, hesitance, or something along those lines—that would make her something more than just a tool to instigate romance. We did get some of her background, but it didn’t add to much about her in terms of personality—the only part of her character that paired her with Sal was that she’s an AI technician, and therefore in a place to help Sal. With the focus on two characters, it would do Katz a favor to give both of them the fleshing-out that they deserve.

That being said, although Clara’s characterization left a lot to be desired, I did like the more romantic aspect of the plot towards the end of the novella. Even beyond the super sweet asexual/wlw representation (both Sal and Clara are asexual and sapphic!), there was a lot about the romance that worked; the setup of Clara fixing Sal’s programming evolving into cuddling was such an adorable and genius setup, and the resolution that came from it was similarly heartwarming. It did feel slightly rushed, but aside from that, Katz left it in a place where I didn’t quite want more, but was satisfied in knowing that their relationship was bound to blossom. I wanted something cute, and I got something cute, so Katz 100% succeeded on that front!

All in all, a tender, cozy novella with sweet romance and tight structure, but bland prose and half-baked characterizations. 3.5 stars!

The Cybernetic Tea Shop is a standalone, but Meredith Katz is the author of several other novels for adults, including the Pandemonium series (The Cobbler’s Soleless Son, Behind Bars, Heir to the Throne, and Barred Souls), the Sixth Sense Investigations series (Empty Vessels and If Wishes Were Fishes), and many more.

Today’s song:

shoutout to chelsea wolfe for playing this before her show. hauntingly beautiful.

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

Posted in ARC Reviews

ARC Review: Kindling – Traci Chee

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

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

Enjoy this ARC review!

Kindling – Traci Chee

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPOILERS AHEAD

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

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

Release date: February 27, 2024

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

Today’s song:

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